Maria Traspaderne and Fatima Zohra Bouaziz |
Nador (Morocco) (EFE).- One year after the death of at least 23 migrants trying to cross the border from Morocco to the Spanish city of Melilla, in North Africa, human rights organizations have more questions than answers : How many deaths were there really? Where are the missing? And the corpses? Were the surviving migrants tried fairly?
Drama on June 24, 2022
The drama occurred on June 24, 2022 at the Chinatown border crossing, when around 2,000 migrants, most of them Sudanese, descended from the nearby Moroccan mountain of Gurugú to the border to cross it, in the deadliest attempt in memory. Melilla.
Since then, Nador, the Moroccan border town in whose mountains hundreds of sub-Saharan Africans hid to cross to Melilla, has become a “ciudad non grata” for migrants, who seek other routes to reach Europe in the face of tight police control. launched by Morocco after the tragedy.
conflicting research
The head of migration for the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH), Said Tbel, believes that on the anniversary of the tragedy there are still many unknowns about what happened.
The Moroccan authorities placed the deceased at 23, of whom only one has been identified: a man from Sudan buried with his family in the Sidi Salem cemetery in Nador.
The AMDH of Nador increases the dead to 27 and speaks of 64 missing and Amnesty International believes that there were 37 dead and 76 missing, figures that the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior dismisses as “unfounded”.
Where are the missing?
“Where are the disappeared? Have some gone? Have they been expelled from the country? Are they dead?” Tbel wonders. According to Amnesty, some died in the process of transferring the hundreds of detainees on 24J to other cities in the country. “All of that needs to be cleared up,” says Tbel.
According to this activist, between three and four relatives, residing in Europe, have traveled to Nador this year to identify their dead, and a dozen families have done so from a distance. “We don’t know what happened to the bodies. Have they buried them or are they waiting to be identified? ”, Is another of his questions.
Legal sources suggest that the 22 official corpses could be in the morgue of the Hassani Hospital in Nador, information that the authorities have not offered.
Frank Iyanga, general secretary of the Democratic Organization of Immigrant Workers (ODTI), also denounces the conditions in which 61 migrants were sentenced to up to 3 years in prison for 24J and dozens more detained and sentenced in the raids of the previous days and of the subsequent months. “The trials were not carried out in good conditions,” he criticizes.
For both activists, an exhaustive investigation of 24J is necessary, since, Iyanga points out, the official of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) of Morocco and those of organizations such as the AMDH or Amnesty International “are contradictory.”
The first talks about the use of proportional force and an investigation by the Moroccan Prosecutor’s Office (of which the results are unknown), while the second denounces excessive force. There are, according to Tbel, “too many versions of what happened.”
Difficulties to circulate, work and live
Twelve months later, sub-Saharan Africans are no longer seen on the streets of Nador. Neighbors, activists and authorities agree that the reinforcement of security and the constant raids have diminished its population.
“Nador has become a non pleasant city for them. It is very difficult to see them. The life of an emigrant, both in Nador and in the eastern region, is very complicated, they have difficulties moving around, finding a job and a home”, says Iyanga.
That makes them look for alternative paths and many, he says, go to the southern coasts of Morocco and Western Sahara to take a boat to the Spanish Canary Islands, a particularly dangerous route across the Atlantic.
Others, according to what they themselves have told EFE and confirmed by other associations, choose to return to Algeria on a return route to try to cross by sea from that country or from Tunisia, since doing it by boat through the north of Morocco is very expensive – between 6,000 and 8,000 euros per person-.
At the border crossing where everything happened, the fences broken by the weight of the migrants are still down and make it difficult for the neighbors to forget the tragedy. According to what they told EFE, before some nights they witnessed jumps by small groups of sub-Saharan Africans, but since 24J they are no longer seen, an impression shared by a local authority.
“There are many soldiers, security has been greatly strengthened. They no longer let them get close, ”explains Ali (fictitious name), who has seen how a fence that almost did not exist in his childhood now reaches 10 meters in height.