Dragged on the ground to place them on a terrace; beaten with batons some who try to get up; previously, shots of smoke canisters against a confused crowd and in full avalanche… The apocryphal images of the tragedy that the Melilla border fence experienced on the Moroccan side collect the most terrible moment of the Moroccan management of immigration illegal sub-Saharan Africa since that country and Spain resumed their relations.
Three days after the tragedy, it has not been constituted, and there are no signs that it will be constituted, any government commission of inquiry. There is only the graphic testimony, which has shaken all of Europe, and which raises suspicions about the possibility of a hardening – tragic in this case – of the Moroccan police action to stop the human waves that crash against the Melilla fence.
But from the Spanish autonomous city has not been forwarded to Moncloa nor to the Interior any report talking about Moroccan police heavy hand, according to Melilla government sources. So far, the version of events known to the Government of Spain is that, during a wave of some 2,000 people towards the border fence, nearly 500 of those people se apelotonaron intentando pasar into Spanish territory through a door in the border center of Chinatown, which one of the migrants had managed to open, with an avalanche that killed twenty of them by suffocation or crushing when the rows behind pushed those in front, and also when a group climbing to the roof of the control center hurtled over those below.
Let Montero not speak
In the government account of the events – flanked by some very controversial statements by President Pedro Sánchez – over and above the mourning, two aspects are highlighted these days: the participation of mafias in the waves and the violence of the immigrants, who threw a rain of stones and sticks on the gendarmes and, already on this side of the fence, on the civil guards.
The minister Government spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguezassured today at a press conference after the Council of Ministers -and when asked about images of the fence that “moves us all”, he said- that “the Government deeply regrets the loss of human lives, and conveys its sorrow to all the victims, also the members of the security forces”, in reference to the more than 40 agents who were injured.
The minister spokesperson has assumed the entire uncomfortable mission of answering, making the Equality and prominent figure of Podemos, Irene Monterowho was also present, repeated gestures not to intervene. For Rodríguez, “it is convenient to mark the problem well: there are mafias that traffic in human beings (…) To avoid these tragedies, this suffering, what must be done is fight the mafias.
“We regret the deaths, but a state cannot allow mafias to violate borders. What we cannot assume is violent attacks. Europe has to become aware of the migratory phenomenon, it is going to increase”, said an hour earlier the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaskathis Monday after a tribute to the victims of terrorism in Congress (informs Miguel Angel Rodriguez).
In Moncloa, Isabel Rodríguez has also launched a firm message: “We work and we watch over the integrity -alluding to the territorial- of our country. We recognize the work of the security forces and bodies and also of the Moroccan security forces.”
More people, more danger
Since February 6, 2014, when, on the Ceuta border of Tarajal, on the Spanish side, drowned 15 immigrants after a controversial action by the Civil Guard, a more tragic event had not been known in the very hot borders of Spain in Africa.
The Spanish police sources consulted do not appreciate a change in the behavior of the Moroccan gendarmes towards the sub-Saharans. “There is no new intervention material, nor do they use more harshness than usual; yes there are more agents, but there are also many more immigrants coming down here,” explains a veteran civil guard from Melilla.
And yet the landscape is changing. On March 2 there was another massive wave against the bars of Melilla. A first count put the number of participants at 2,500. Another more measured gave 1,000. About 500 managed to enter Spanish territory. And that, refer to the aforementioned sources, was the beginning of a change in trend. Until then, in Melilla there were known assaults of between 300 and 400 people, 500 at most. From then on, very numerous rows descend from the mountains near Nador, exceeding a thousand people trying to set foot on European soil.
To these massive queues, Morocco has responded with a major interception device in troops, and now often equipped with riot gear. That material had its role in the avalanche on Friday. The smoke canisters could also help to corner the migrants against an ‘L’ corner of the fence, next to the border control building at the Chinatown crossing in Melilla. In the videos that have emerged, the Moroccan riot police several canisters are fired at a bunch of people trying to climb, one on top of the other, towards the roof, until that whole group falls on those below.
The assaults on the fence are now less numerous, but with many more men. The other difference with respect to previous cases is the violence. Showing cracked hoovesvarious police unions have denounced the effects of the rain of stones which fell on top of the guards and policemen on the Spanish side of the border. Also, and much more intense, fell on the Moroccan agents. On other occasions, the migrants come with metal hooks in their hands, with which they try to scale the fence. Those hooks become weapons in the face of police charges.
For a police officer from Ceuta who was also consulted, Friday’s tragedy in Melilla could have been avoided, and he blames Morocco: “You cannot let that so many people are impounded near the border. Once they start running against the fence, the strange thing is that there are no more misfortunes”. There is, however, a general rule of congruence, proportionality and opportunity in the action of a riot squad before a crowd. “If people are huddled , Of course no need to corner her anymorebut you would have to be there at that time to understand it,” says this source. He does not think about the absence of emergency medical personnel in the device; he only certifies it.
Charge in the Gurugú
Last Friday, a civil guard shocked by the images he had seen on the Moroccan side of the Melilla fence commented to this newspaper: “You can’t stop 2,000 people at the foot of the fence. That’s crazy.” And it seems that the Moroccan gendarmes are trying to dissolve the waves of migrants kilometers back, on Mount Gurugú, where they take refuge in increasingly crowded camps.
Another apocryphal video attests to this. A pitched battle at sunset, mehanis and Moroccan gendarmes against sub-Saharan migrants. Screams, runs and stones. A video from a Moroccan police officer shows law enforcement officers from that country dressed in riot gear deployed in a valley and a slope of Mount Gurugú, in the vicinity of Nadir and Melilla. The video would prove that the Moroccan police are trying to disperse the sub-Saharan camps on that mountain, which have become very large, and that they are the starting point of the great human floods that collide with the Melilla border fence.
The video is recorded by one of the gendarmes involved in the device. In the images, the agents move back when the migrants reject them with stones, and advance in feints.
Spanish police sources from the city of Melilla place the police charge last Wednesday, but other sources of similar solvency doubt that the video has any temporal relationship with the dramatic events of last Friday.