Melilla (EFE).- Amnesty International (AI) has raised to more than 100 the fatalities that could have been claimed by “the massacre” of June 24, 2022 on the border between Spain and Morocco in Melilla, a figure that is almost five times the that the authorities of the neighboring country officially gave and that different NGOs have always questioned.
About a year after the events, AI regrets that “no adequate investigation has been opened into the allegations of crimes under international law that were committed on both sides of the border” despite the fact that, as it asserts, “they clearly occurred under Spanish jurisdiction” because the fences and border posts are in its territory.
The organization defends that this entails “an obligation to investigate all the actions that took place there”, but in the past year “no official, Moroccan or Spanish, has been brought to justice for the rights violations that caused the death, disappearance and injuries to so many people.”
This entity raises the death toll on 24J to more than 100, compared to the 23 officially recognized by Morocco, based on testimonies from survivors who point out that there were people who died on the bus transfer from the border to the south of the country “without receiving any kind of medical assistance despite the seriousness of the injuries.”
Half a thousand migrants abandoned without medical attention
In total, according to his data, around half a thousand migrants who tried to access Melilla were transferred “by force” to “remote areas of Morocco”, located more than a thousand kilometers from the border, “where they were stripped of their possessions and left them on the side of the road without medical attention.”
“We are facing a huge figure that speaks for itself of the suffering suffered by these people at the border”, points out AI, which focuses on the more than 80 disappeared after the attempt to enter Melilla, about whom it fears that “many of them could have died” because their relatives do not know their whereabouts.
In this sense, the NGO publicly denounces that “the Moroccan authorities have hindered the efforts to search for missing and deceased persons”, denying visas to relatives so that they can go and identify the bodies, most of which are still in the morgue. from Nador a year later.
“The Moroccan authorities have declared that they will not bury the corpses without identification, but they do not facilitate the identification of the bodies either,” AI points out to denounce that no progress is being made on the path opened by the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs three months ago so that relatives will send DNA samples to Morocco.
“Desamparo” of the families of the victims
Added to this is the “absolute helplessness” in which the families of the victims find themselves, to whom neither Spain nor Morocco have offered any compensation or help to find out the possible whereabouts of the migrants who are still missing a year after “the massacre” on the Melilla border, now “armored”, like that of Ceuta.
Thus, the land borders of the two autonomous cities “do not offer any possibility of accessing the posts to request asylum”, according to AI, which insists that “a practice of institutionalized racism” is taking place because this situation is suffered, above all , people of sub-Saharan origin.
And this despite the high rate of recognition of international protection and favorable resolutions of asylum applications in 2022 at the state level of people from countries such as Burkina Faso (99%), Mali (96%) or Sudan (92%), the latter country from which most of the victims of 24-J came.
Based on these data, AI considers that it has been demonstrated that “despite the fact that they are prevented from reaching the border posts, those who manage to cross the border are people deserving of international protection.”
Situation of migrants trapped in Morocco
Despite this, “the human rights situation for many of these migrants who have been trapped in Morocco has deteriorated”, as evidenced by the testimonies to which AI has accessed, which suggest that many have tried to leave that country. to the south, or return to Libya, Tunisia or Algeria at the risk of being fined, threatened or imprisoned if found by the Moroccan police.
Specifically, AI echoes the version of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH), which points out that 87 people are still detained in Nador and other prisons in the country and there is no public information about the trials of these people or about the whereabouts of the rest of the people who were transferred.
“Impunity and obscurantism have been perpetuated”
It also ensures that in this past year “impunity and obscurantism have been perpetuated” in the absence of investigations by both countries, that “they seem to have agreed to hide what really happened that day and render accounts” and that in their March 2023 summit “maintained their lack of transparency in relation to their agreements for migration control.”
In view of the upcoming general elections, which will take place a month after the first anniversary of 23J, AI has asked the parties that are competing that “Ceuta and Melilla stop being places where it is practically impossible to request asylum, and where exceptional legislation is applied to the outside of the international obligations contracted by Spain”.
In this way, the NGO refers to the delivery from Spain to Morocco of at least 470 migrants on 24J, an issue that focused the Ombudsman’s investigation, some “hot returns” on which AI requests before the next elections generals a political commitment to put an end to them through legislative reform.