Post by Bozur on Oct 17, 2005 9:46:47 GMT -5
Morocco Again Expels Africans Trying Risky Path to Europe
By CRAIG S. SMITH
Published: October 17, 2005
PARIS, Oct. 16 - Morocco deported hundreds of African migrants from the country's stark southern desert over the weekend, part of a continuing effort to rid Morocco of migrants who have massed in hopes of illegally reaching Spain, either by boat or by breaching the barriers surrounding two tiny Spanish enclaves on the coast.
"The operation is continuing," said Muhammad Ben Abdallah, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, saying that migrants had been flown to Senegal and Mali, whose citizens make up the two largest groups of undocumented Africans in the country. He said Morocco was negotiating repatriation agreements with several other sub-Saharan countries.
Mr. Ben Abdallah denied that Morocco had dumped some migrants in the desert areas to the south to fend for themselves, as alleged by the Polisario Front, an independence movement in an area of Western Sahara claimed by Morocco. That group said Friday that it had found dozens of African migrants abandoned in the heavily mined area beyond the 1,500-mile wall that separates Moroccan-controlled territory from that controlled by the Polisario.
Morocco has called the charges "propaganda" and blamed both the Polisario and their supporters in Algeria with abetting the flow of illegal migrants into Morocco. It has said that none of the migrants being expelled have been left on the kingdom's southern border.
Morocco has faced stiff criticism for its treatment of migrants after 14 sub-Saharan Africans died in recent weeks while trying to climb the double fencing that separates the country from the two Spanish enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla. Some of those people were apparently killed by gunfire from Moroccan border guards.
The country has been charged with dumping migrants in the desert before.
The French-based aid agency Doctors Without Borders last week found dozens of migrants - many of them dehydrated, hungry and injured during attempts to cross into the Spanish enclaves - stranded near Oujda, a northeastern town by the Algerian border.
Many other migrants interviewed in Morocco last week said they had been repeatedly expelled into the stark no man's land between Algeria and Morocco, only to return on foot.
Moroccan officials say they are caught between weak sub-Saharan countries that do nothing to stop the flow of migrants north and European countries angry that the flow reaches their southern shores.
"All of the parties involved have to sit down and solve this problem," said Mohamed Ibrahimi, governor of Oujda Province, after overseeing the deportation of hundreds of Senegalese by air last week. "Morocco can't do it alone."
By law, the Spanish authorities are supposed to send migrants who manage to get into Ceuta and Melilla to the mainland for interviews before either granting them political asylum or deporting them to their country of origin. (Many destroy any identifying papers, so nationalities are often deduced from interviews.) The migrants are not forcibly detained while in Spain, allowing them to disappear into increasingly borderless Europe.
But many migrants said they were turned over to Moroccan authorities immediately after being caught inside Spanish territory. They said the Moroccans routinely beat them, took their money and valuables, and expelled them across the border into Algeria.
Musa Awadu, a stocky 28-year-old from Ghana hiding in the pine forests above Melilla, said he had made three attempts to cross into the enclave and succeeded twice but was immediately expelled. He said the Moroccans took him to the Algerian border both times, and he walked back, a four-day journey.
He said he had fled Ghana in 1992 to escape tribal wars that had killed most of his family. After years of frustrated efforts to reach Europe from Libya, he began hearing of Cueta and Melilla, and finally set off on a new pilgrimage of hope.
"If I go back to Ghana, I'll be a killer," he said, arguing that he would be drawn into the revenge killings that have consumed so many men there. "All I want is to get to Europe to make my life there."
On Thursday, dozens of Moroccans protested against the migrants' treatment outside the Parliament building in Rabat. "We are all African," some chanted, according to news reports. Others carried signs that read, "Morocco cannot become Europe's immigration policeman."
The office of the United Nations high commissioner for refugees in Geneva has expressed dismay at what it called the "unnecessarily violent treatment" of illegal migrants in Morocco and has dispatched representatives to assess the situation.
Secretary General Kofi Annan has expressed concern over the speed and nature of the expulsions.
The Moroccan government began deporting the migrants from Oujda last week. More than a dozen busloads of migrants left there in a government-escorted convoy, their destination unknown. International aid agencies and reporters tried to track the convoy to ensure that the migrants were not abandoned in the desert.
One doctor with Doctors Without Borders said as many as 1,000 migrants had been moved to military camps near the town of Goulimine in southern Morocco.
He said that some had been using cellphones to communicate intermittently, but that their batteries were failing.
Maudo Touray, Gambia's ambassador to Morocco, said by telephone from Goulimine on Friday that some of the migrants at the camps would be flown to their homelands in coming days.
Renwick McLean contributed reporting from Madrid for this article.
By CRAIG S. SMITH
Published: October 17, 2005
PARIS, Oct. 16 - Morocco deported hundreds of African migrants from the country's stark southern desert over the weekend, part of a continuing effort to rid Morocco of migrants who have massed in hopes of illegally reaching Spain, either by boat or by breaching the barriers surrounding two tiny Spanish enclaves on the coast.
"The operation is continuing," said Muhammad Ben Abdallah, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, saying that migrants had been flown to Senegal and Mali, whose citizens make up the two largest groups of undocumented Africans in the country. He said Morocco was negotiating repatriation agreements with several other sub-Saharan countries.
Mr. Ben Abdallah denied that Morocco had dumped some migrants in the desert areas to the south to fend for themselves, as alleged by the Polisario Front, an independence movement in an area of Western Sahara claimed by Morocco. That group said Friday that it had found dozens of African migrants abandoned in the heavily mined area beyond the 1,500-mile wall that separates Moroccan-controlled territory from that controlled by the Polisario.
Morocco has called the charges "propaganda" and blamed both the Polisario and their supporters in Algeria with abetting the flow of illegal migrants into Morocco. It has said that none of the migrants being expelled have been left on the kingdom's southern border.
Morocco has faced stiff criticism for its treatment of migrants after 14 sub-Saharan Africans died in recent weeks while trying to climb the double fencing that separates the country from the two Spanish enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla. Some of those people were apparently killed by gunfire from Moroccan border guards.
The country has been charged with dumping migrants in the desert before.
The French-based aid agency Doctors Without Borders last week found dozens of migrants - many of them dehydrated, hungry and injured during attempts to cross into the Spanish enclaves - stranded near Oujda, a northeastern town by the Algerian border.
Many other migrants interviewed in Morocco last week said they had been repeatedly expelled into the stark no man's land between Algeria and Morocco, only to return on foot.
Moroccan officials say they are caught between weak sub-Saharan countries that do nothing to stop the flow of migrants north and European countries angry that the flow reaches their southern shores.
"All of the parties involved have to sit down and solve this problem," said Mohamed Ibrahimi, governor of Oujda Province, after overseeing the deportation of hundreds of Senegalese by air last week. "Morocco can't do it alone."
By law, the Spanish authorities are supposed to send migrants who manage to get into Ceuta and Melilla to the mainland for interviews before either granting them political asylum or deporting them to their country of origin. (Many destroy any identifying papers, so nationalities are often deduced from interviews.) The migrants are not forcibly detained while in Spain, allowing them to disappear into increasingly borderless Europe.
But many migrants said they were turned over to Moroccan authorities immediately after being caught inside Spanish territory. They said the Moroccans routinely beat them, took their money and valuables, and expelled them across the border into Algeria.
Musa Awadu, a stocky 28-year-old from Ghana hiding in the pine forests above Melilla, said he had made three attempts to cross into the enclave and succeeded twice but was immediately expelled. He said the Moroccans took him to the Algerian border both times, and he walked back, a four-day journey.
He said he had fled Ghana in 1992 to escape tribal wars that had killed most of his family. After years of frustrated efforts to reach Europe from Libya, he began hearing of Cueta and Melilla, and finally set off on a new pilgrimage of hope.
"If I go back to Ghana, I'll be a killer," he said, arguing that he would be drawn into the revenge killings that have consumed so many men there. "All I want is to get to Europe to make my life there."
On Thursday, dozens of Moroccans protested against the migrants' treatment outside the Parliament building in Rabat. "We are all African," some chanted, according to news reports. Others carried signs that read, "Morocco cannot become Europe's immigration policeman."
The office of the United Nations high commissioner for refugees in Geneva has expressed dismay at what it called the "unnecessarily violent treatment" of illegal migrants in Morocco and has dispatched representatives to assess the situation.
Secretary General Kofi Annan has expressed concern over the speed and nature of the expulsions.
The Moroccan government began deporting the migrants from Oujda last week. More than a dozen busloads of migrants left there in a government-escorted convoy, their destination unknown. International aid agencies and reporters tried to track the convoy to ensure that the migrants were not abandoned in the desert.
One doctor with Doctors Without Borders said as many as 1,000 migrants had been moved to military camps near the town of Goulimine in southern Morocco.
He said that some had been using cellphones to communicate intermittently, but that their batteries were failing.
Maudo Touray, Gambia's ambassador to Morocco, said by telephone from Goulimine on Friday that some of the migrants at the camps would be flown to their homelands in coming days.
Renwick McLean contributed reporting from Madrid for this article.