Freedom lies on the other side

Melilla and Ceuta, tiny Spanish enclaves on Africa’s Mediterranean coast, have become a front line in a battle between asylum-seekers fleeing war and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa and the authorities accused of increasingly violent measures to keep them out.

African migrants climb a border fence during an attempt to cross from Morocco into Spanish territory near Spain’s north African enclave of Melilla last month. Jesus Blasco de Avellaneda / Reuters

Holidaymakers of the more adventurous kind are lured to Melilla by the promise of exotic novelty and a cultural melting pot in a corner of North Africa that has been Spanish for 500 years.

What tourism officials stop short of saying is that beyond the resort’s “pleasures of the unknown” is a battleground in Europe’s war on unrestrained immigration.

Melilla, bordered by Morocco and the Mediterranean, has joined the French Channel port of Calais and the Italian Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, just 113 kilometres from the Tunisian coast, as a front line in the miserable conflict between human desire for self-betterment and political necessity.

Immigration is perhaps the most pressing issue after the economy to confront political leaders in Europe. Concern about an influx seen by some as relentless, and government failures to find viable solutions, helped far right and populist parties make gains, spectacularly so in countries including France and the UK, in last month’s elections for the European parliament.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, has called for a “Schengen 2”, with immediate suspensions of the existing 1995 pact on free movement across EU borders. While dismissing the goal of “zero immigration” as an illusion, he said a refined Schengen should exclude countries not enforcing a robust common immigration policy.

Hundreds of would-be African migrants have been flocking to Melilla and its twin city of Ceuta, nearly 400 kilometres and a five-and-a-half-hour road journey away, in recent years.

Both have autonomous status within Spanish sovereignty, which Morocco challenges, and represent the only two land frontiers between Africa and Europe.

The lure to migrants from sub-Saharan Africa is strong despite odds stacked heavily against them by the Moroccan and Spanish authorities.

Last month 700 risked serious injury by trying in separate waves on the same day to scale a five-metre fence topped with barbed wire. The first group of 500 remained near the top of the fencing for half an hour before Moroccan troops shepherded them back. Two hours later, a further 200 were stopped by Moroccan police as they tried to breach the fence.

It was only the latest in a series of surges by Africans desperate to escape poverty or conflict in their own countries and build new lives in Europe.

In another incident in March, about half the 1,000 migrants who tried to breach a three-layer Spanish security barrier managed to reach the other side. Media reports described this as the biggest single illegal crossing in more than a decade.

But making it to “the other side” does not mean the migrants succeed in their mission. Spanish Guardia Civil officers routinely intercept them, taking them to a gate in the fencing before handing them back to Moroccan Auxiliary Forces.

A month earlier, 15 migrants drowned in Moroccan waters while trying to swim to Ceuta from a beach on the Moroccan side of the border.

Human-rights activists claimed Spanish troops had contributed to the loss of life by firing rubber bullets. Anger at such tactics was hardly soothed when Spain admitted its forces had opened fire, while insisting they had not directly aimed at the migrants.

This was not the only instance of rubber bullets being fired on migrants in February.

In further measures of deterrence, Moroccan authorities have been working on new high fencing with blade tops, according to Morocco’s Rif Association for Human Rights.

In a report published in March, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said migrants were being denied basic rights provided under international law. It quoted interviewees saying they had been beaten and robbed of money and valuables by members of Morocco’s Auxiliary Forces.

In a summary of the 79-page report’s findings published in Spanish media, Katya Salmi, a fellow in HRW’s African programme, said: “Spain should refrain from summarily expelling migrants and handing them over to Moroccan border officials who beat them … such returns also violate international and European Union law, which prohibit countries from forcibly returning anyone to a place where they would face a real risk of being subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment.”

Ms Salmi, who is French-Moroccan, said migrants typically tried to reach Melilla “by storming in large groups, climbing the fence with wooden ladders or grasping the chain-link directly”.

Migrants interviewed by HRW had spoken of the auxiliary forces throwing rocks at them and beating them with wooden sticks, she said.

The full HRW report, Abused and Expelled: Ill-treatment of SubSaharan African Migrants in Morocco, said abuses occurred when security forces detained migrants who had tried unsuccessfully to reach the Spanish enclave.

Violence against migrants expelled from Melilla was said to be continuing according to evidence collected in the Moroccan cities of Oujda, Nador and Rabat as recently as January and February.

The Moroccan government is quoted by HRW as saying it does not expel people but carries out lawful “returns to the border”.

The report, however, said it had been informed by migrants that with the Moroccan-Algerian border formally closed, they had been taken by Moroccan security officers to isolated locations and forced to walk into Algerian territory where they faced further abuses at the hands of Algerian security forces.

Bill Frelick, HRW’s refugee programme director, said the dumping of migrants at the Algerian border appeared to have stopped. “But that’s not enough. Morocco needs firm procedures to make sure that the migrants’ due process rights are respected and to allow them to apply for asylum.”

HRW says Spanish security forces are also guilty of using excessive force in the summary expulsions carried out when migrants do reach Melilla.

Sharp diplomatic disagreement adds an extra dimension to the human tragedy.

Spain has long resisted Moroccan demands for sovereignty of Melilla and Ceuta, claiming both to be integral parts of the Spanish state since the 15th century.

Melilla is reputedly the last piece of Spanish soil where a statue of the late dictator, General Francisco Franco, still stands.

Morocco argues that Spain’s continued possession of the cities, along with Perejil Island and other small parcels of land, is an unacceptable relic of colonial rule.

The charms of Melilla remain largely unknown to conventional holidaymakers.

“Benny”, a retired US computer scientist living in the mainland Spanish city of Malaga and a frequent contributor to the TripAdvisor website, speaks of “a hidden gem … for tourists who want to explore places off the beaten track that have not been spoiled by mass tourism”.

He praises the beauty of an “unexpected treasure trove of modernist buildings” and the ability of the 70,000 residents of different faiths to coexist harmoniously. Melilla stands, he claims, as a role model for parts of the Middle East and elsewhere “where people do not get along with each other”.

But Benny, who asked for his full identity to be withheld, said he had some sympathy for the authorities.

“If I lived there, I would be afraid that one day there would be thousands of immigrants who would overrun the city,” he said.

One grievance of Spanish residents, he said, was that non-governmental organisations (NGOs) seemed concerned only about the plight of immigrants and constantly attacked the Melilla and national Spanish authorities.

“The immigrants who are trying to enter Melilla have been used by mafias who make money bringing them to the border,” he added. “This is human trafficking that the governments in Africa need to address.”

Spain recently pledged €2.1 million (Dh10.5m) to strengthen measures to prevent illegal crossings.

The EU home affairs commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrom, has demanded explanations for the use of rubber bullets.

For his part, the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, has said the EU must devote more money and resources to help with border control.

With further attempts to breach the barriers seen as inevitable, Mr Rajoy’s appeal reflects Spain’s view that the EU must to do more to recognise the siege of Melilla as a European and not merely Spanish and Moroccan problem.