Statement of the Internationalist Struggle, the Spanish section of the IWU-FI
27 June 2022
On the morning of 24 June, there was an attempt to jump the fence in Melilla. According to the Government Delegation in the Autonomous City, about 2,000 people approached the border perimeter and 500 tried to cross it, mostly people from Sudan and Chad. Once in the Autonomous City, they were directed to the Temporary Stay Centre for Immigrants (CETI), from where they were sent to the police station.
The police brutality exercised by the security forces of both the Spanish and Moroccan states has led to the death of 37 young people and over 300 people sent to various hospitals in the area, even to the point of overcrowding them.
Apart from the episodes of physical violence, aggression and inhuman and humiliating treatment suffered by people in traffic, as has been repeatedly denounced by Moroccan and Spanish human rights organisations, this time the images of people detained by Moroccan security forces and bodies lying on the ground and piled up have been added.
The jump comes as regards the latest diplomatic crisis and subsequent agreement between Madrid and Rabat with the Spanish government’s support for the Kingdom of Morocco as regards the conflict in Western Sahara.
The hostility in the settlements in which trafficked persons – mostly black people from central West Africa – are forced to live is becoming untenable. There are documented episodes of unprecedented violence by the Moroccan authorities towards people trying to survive in the mountains. More and more people are being arrested.
This repression has also been experienced during the crossing on both sides of the fence. On Spanish and Moroccan territory.
From Internationalist Struggle we reject the aggression of the Moroccan and Spanish police and we demand:
The guarantee of integrity and respect for the human rights of all people.
The establishment of a commission for the investigation and punishment of those responsible for the repression in Morocco and in the Spanish state made up of Moroccan and Spanish human rights organisations, victims and their families.
