{"id":40195,"date":"2022-06-25T11:33:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-25T10:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/caminandofronteras.org\/?p=40195"},"modified":"2023-03-27T10:46:57","modified_gmt":"2023-03-27T09:46:57","slug":"statement-29-deaths-at-europes-borders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/caminandofronteras.org\/en\/statement-29-deaths-at-europes-borders\/","title":{"rendered":"STATEMENT: 29 DEATHS AT EUROPE\u2019S BORDERS"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Spain and Morocco\u2019s deadly immigration agreement<\/strong><\/h3>\n

UPDATE: Forty victims confirmed. These figures are not final and may continue to rise. At the time of publication, 29 victims had been confirmed. <\/span><\/p>\n

The tragic events at the border between Melilla and Nador in Morocco on 24 June 2022 are a violent reminder of the failings of security-focused migration policies. The 27 deaths and hundreds of wounded people, including migrants and Moroccan police officers, are the terrible outcome of European policy to externalise EU borders with the collusion of a country from the Global South, Morocco. The deaths of these young Africans at the gates of \u2018Fortress Europe\u2019 alert us to the deadly nature of the partnership on security and immigration between Morocco and Spain.<\/span><\/p>\n

The conditions that paved the way for the tragedy on Friday 24 June had been brewing for several weeks. Mass detentions, raids on camps and forced displacement of migrant communities in Nador and the surrounding region foreshadowed the incident. The renewal of the agreement on migration control between Morocco and Spain in March 2022 has led to a proliferation of coordinated action between the two countries.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This action is accompanied by human rights violations targeting migrant people in the north (Nador, T\u00e9touan and Tangier) and in Laayoune and Dakhla. The tragic incident is the direct result of a plan to exert pressure on refugees.<\/span><\/p>\n

For more than a year and a half, migrants in Nador have seen their access to medicine and healthcare denied, their camps set on fire, their belongings plundered, their sparse food supplies destroyed and the little drinking water available in the camps confiscated.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These punitive operations have triggered spiralling violence on both sides. While this violence is reprehensible regardless of its source, it reminds us of the systematic violence suffered by migrant communities in Nador for years at the hands of Spanish and Moroccan law enforcement agencies. These practices have been condemned on numerous occasions by national and regional institutions and by the UN.<\/span><\/p>\n

In response to this latest tragedy at the borders and given the large number of victims, which sadly looks set to rise, the signatories to this statement would like to express the following points:<\/strong><\/p>\n