Moroccan authorities have raised the official number of dead migrants attempting to enter Melilla on Friday to 23. The tragedy remained hidden for hours on Friday morning. It was known that the Civil Guard in Melilla was alerted at 06.40 in the morning by the Moroccan gendarmerie about a massive attempted attack on the border fence to enter Spanish territory. The attack finally came around 8:30 a.m. About 1,500 migrants took part in the attempt and only 133 managed to cross the Chinatown border crossing. It was the first massive attack since Morocco received the letter from Pedro Sánchez in March, in which the president openly endorsed the Moroccan proposal for autonomy for Western Sahara, to the detriment of the self-determination referendum called for by the Polisario Front.
From the early hours of the morning until four o’clock in the afternoon there was a revealing silence on the part of the Moroccan authorities, with no one knowing exactly whether there had been any deaths or how many.
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The Moroccan Human Rights Association (AMDH), the most established in the country, had no confirmation as of 2pm that anyone had died. It turned out that the emigrants had used violent methods. And the organization itself, which has long worked to protect migrants, has publicly called for an end to migrant and police violence. But nothing else was known.
After midday, the newspaper La Razón reported that 40 sub-Saharan nationals and five Moroccan gendarmes had died. But the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior has not confirmed or denied anything. “We are consulting our people on the ground,” an authorized source told the newspaper. Most authorities and officials also knew nothing about the Spanish embassy in Rabat. Suddenly, rumors spread that “something” had happened at the border, something different from the previous massive attacks, which almost never resulted in fatalities. Finally, at 4:00 p.m. in Morocco, an hour later in mainland Spain, the authorities of Nador issued a brief statement stating that five irregular emigrants had died during their attempt to gain entry and also as a result were killed by an avalanche falling from the fence. In addition, they reported that there were 13 serious injuries to sub-Saharan people and five serious injuries to the police. Finally, at eleven o’clock at night, an authority from Nador declared that the 13 heavy emigrants had died, bringing the total to 18. And he categorically assured that no gendarme died.
The moment dozens of migrants try to cross the fence. Javier Bernardo (AP)
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From that moment, videos began to circulate, each one more animated. The AMDH published several of them, in which dozens of lifeless sub-Saharan people could be seen huddled on the ground, unable to distinguish very clearly who was alive and who was dead. In another video, a riot police officer tries to pick up a migrant who is lying motionless on the ground. Seeing that he is not responding, he tries to feel his pulse first on his wrist and then on his neck. Another agent places the baton at the migrant’s side and checks that he is not moving. In the midst of this mass of lifeless bodies, crushed at the foot of the fence, one emigrant suddenly manages to move an arm and another, further away, a leg. However, most people from sub-Saharan Africa remain motionless, watched by a line of riot police. An official source familiar with the events told this newspaper on condition of anonymity: “The cause of death is that there was an avalanche. And the strongest fell on the weakest.
This Saturday, the AMDH, along with other associations such as the Spanish Walking Borders or Attac Maroc, issued a statement where the death toll has risen to 27 emigrants. The Interior Ministry did not change the number from 18. A local source in Nador reported at 3.30pm – another hour in mainland Spain – that two agents of the Moroccan security forces and 33 migrants were still under medical control at the Hassani Hospital in Nador and the University Hospital in the city of Oujda. And that everyone’s health is “stable”. The associations called for an independent judicial investigation “both on the Moroccan and Spanish sides and on the international level” to clarify the details of the tragedy.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) also issued a statement this Saturday, expressing their “deep sadness” and “concern” at the Melilla tragedy. Both IOM and UNHCR have called on the authorities to prioritize the safety of migrants and refugees, refrain from using excessive force and uphold their human rights. “These violent events show more than ever how important it is to find durable solutions,” the international organizations emphasize in the statement, also calling for the international community to “increase access to safer alternative routes to reduce the use of hazardous travel.” and thus reduce the risk that such tragic events will repeat themselves in the future”.
Similarly, Podemos regretted what happened this Saturday and called on the European Union to “promptly and independently” conduct its own investigations to “clarify the facts and eliminate accountability.” “Violating international law, including selling the rights of the Saharawi people and trusting governments that systematically violate human rights, has consequences,” the party’s International Secretariat said in a statement, which, without citing it, referred to the turn alludes to PSOE in reference to Western Sahara. “Spain needs to reconsider a policy of border externalization and blackmail by Morocco that generates so much violence and suffering. If the dead are blonde with blue eyes, everyone knows that,” United We Can Parliament Speaker Pablo Echenique reported on social media Paula Chousa.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez also defended Morocco’s actions this Saturday, during the appearance in which he announced the new package of anti-crisis measures, calling it “responsible” for the tragedy “the mafia” that you traffic in human beings. “Yesterday I first of all expressed my solidarity and confirmed the extraordinary work that the forces and organs of the state are doing in our country, including some civil guards who were injured as a result of the violent attack. And I also want to repeat this description, violent and organized by the mafias who traffic in human beings,” said Sánchez, who reiterated his statements on Friday, in which he defended that the Moroccan gendarmerie “were deeply committed to this try avoid violent assaults.”