- On the occasion of the High-Level Meeting between Spain and Morocco to be held starting today, Amnesty International demands a clear commitment from both countries to investigate what happened at the Chinatown border post on June 24 and clarify the number of people deceased as well as the location of the disappeared.
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The entity demands that the government of Pedro Sánchez comply with its obligation to allow asylum requests at the border posts of the autonomous cities. The reform of the Citizen Security Law must eliminate summary returns and those contrary to international law.
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Amnesty International calls on the Spanish government to abandon its policy of ignorance and invisibility of human rights in its relations with Morocco, put the human rights situation in Western Sahara on the table and call for the release of people imprisoned solely for expressing their opinions .
Marwan, Jalal, Mustafa, Ibrahim, Ahmed, Adel o Yasser. These are some of the names of the 37 young people, mostly Sudanese, who died on the border of Melilla with Morocco on June 24 of last year, and of some ofthe 77 who have been missing since that day.
Amnesty International activists have brought this morning silhouettes with their names at the gates of the Moroccan Embassy in Madrid and the Palacio de la Moncloa to demand that the governments of both countries meet as of today at the High Level Meeting to, firstly, investigate what happened and, secondly, to put an end to the policy of border “exceptionalism” in Ceuta and Melilla that encourages human rights abuses and prevents, for example, in practice, people from requesting asylum without jumping over the fence or risking losing their lives in the water, and thus guaranteeing that a tragedy like the one occurred on the border of Melilla last June is not repeated.
For this organization, lThe policies of outsourcing immigration control are proving to have lethal consequences. On the southern border between Spain and Morocco, black people are suffering lethal violence, torture and other ill-treatment, abuse, refoulement, forced transfers and enforced disappearances, among other egregious human rights violations.
“We demand that this summit signify the beginning of the end of impunity and obscurantism regarding government actions that contributed to the death or disappearance of more than 100 people in just a few hours on June 24, 2022. The delegations of both countries must commit to finish with the Politics of exceptionality of the borders in Ceuta and Melilla as spaces without rights and impunityto stop the ill-treatment of migrants, to guarantee the possibility of requesting asylum for people of sub-Saharan origin and to end collective expulsions once and for all,” demanded Esteban Beltrán, director of Amnesty International Spain in front of La Moncloa .
The organization considers that more than six months later, the Spanish and Moroccan authorities have carried out a cover-up policy, without any proper investigation being launched into the allegations of crimes under international law and other serious human rights violations that were committed. on both sides of the border. Nor have their relatives been treated with a minimum of humanity, since they have not received any type of information during these 6 months and they have only encountered obstacles y a total lack of interest both on the part of the Spanish authorities and of the Moroccans.
In this sense, Amnesty International considers the filing of the case decided by the Spanish Prosecutor’s Office “surprising”. Although it expressly recognizes the need to guarantee international protection to people on the southern border and the absence of legal, safe and effective ways to request asylum, it shelves other especially serious issues, such as the death in Spanish territory of at least 23 people, recognized by the Moroccan government itself, and the complaints about excessive use of force and failure to provide assistance to the hundreds of people who remained for hours in that area without receiving any type of health care.
“It seems like a gross joke that in the face of these serious events, with tremendous images showing people dying at the Chinatown border post and which resulted in a large number of deaths, hundreds of injuries and at least 77 missing people, The only recommendation from the State Attorney General’s Office is that the Ministry of the Interior open an internal investigation into the throwing of stones by some Civil Guard agents,” lamented Beltrán.
“We still don’t know how many people lost their lives that day or many of their names, but we do know that tear gas was used in dead-end spaces, that people on the ground were beaten, or that medical assistance was denied to the injured. for hours by the Spanish and Moroccan security forces. It was an illegal, cruel and dangerous act,” said Virginia Álvarez, a researcher for Amnesty International.
In addition, the human rights entity considers that the Spanish police violated international asylum law by return without guarantees to Morocco to at least 470 personas, many of them undoubtedly deserving of asylum, according to figures from the Ombudsman. After their return, hundreds of people, including minors, were detained and transferred by the Moroccan authorities, according to different testimonies, to places located hundreds of kilometers away, and abandoned to their fate on roads outside the cities.
No civil servant, Moroccan or Spanish, has so far been brought to justice for the rights violations that caused the death, disappearance and injury of so many people. If the Spanish and Moroccan governments continue without taking any action in this regard, an international investigation by the United Nations will be necessary.
Hot returns, Sahara and freedom of expression
Amnesty International has reported that last week it sent a letter to the President of the Spanish Government with requests about what happened in Melilla, as well as requesting Transparency and accountability on the Spain-Morocco agreements on migration and the end of summary expulsions – those known as hot returns- within the framework of the upcoming reform of the Citizen Security Law.
The letter also indicates serious violations of human rights in Morocco so that are presented to the Moroccan authorities in the summit that begins today in Rabat. Firstly, the organization denounces how in recent years it has become increasingly difficult andl access of external observers to Western Sahara such as journalists or NGO staff, and, despite the requests of numerous organizations, the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) has still not incorporated human rights monitoring work.
In this sense, the Moroccan authorities respond with the use of force to the peaceful demonstrations of Saharawi people, while the activists suffer constant intimidation and face numerous criminal proceedings with a clear repressive intention. A clear example of this practice is that of Sultana Khaya. Presidente de the League for the Defense of Human Rights and against the Looting of Natural Resources, Sultana was detained along with her family for months during which they were subjected to torture and sexual assaults. The sultana was able to flee to Spain where she is being treated for health problems.
Another emblematic case of the repression of activists for the rights of the Sahrawis is Mohamed Lamine Haddi, sentenced in 2013 to 25 years in prison in a trial that Amnesty International described as unfair. Since then, he has denounced cfrommy guards from prison they subject him to torture, verbal abuse, beatings and death threats. In April 2022, he informed his family that after a prison transfer he had beennclosed for days “in a cell the size of a toilet cubicle”. Lamine has started several hunger strikes to protest their conditions of seclusion and by Not receive medical care adequate.
Finally, as a sign of the lack of freedom of expression in MoroccoAmnesty International has reminded Pedro Sánchez of the arrests and sentences of the activist of the Moroccan Association for the Defense of Human Rights (AMDH) Rida Benotmane; a the human rights defender and member of the collective “Femmes Marocaines Contre la Detention Politique” Saida el Alami; a one of the leaders of the protest movement against the situation in The Rif, Nasser Zefzafi; a lto blogger and activist Fatima Karim; o athe freelance journalist Omar Rad.
International Amnestyhas asked that “these names are not ignored during the summit and withan citok in the meetings that will take place fromtoday, and that their cases and the human rights situation in general stop being invisible in within the framework of bilateral relations between the governments of Spain and Morocco.