Spain announced it was installing a 500-meter-long containment barrier on the sea border between its North African territory of Ceuta and neighboring Morocco after between 50,000 and 60,000 migrants breached the frontier earlier this week, reports BritPanorama.
The death toll climbed to 67, including some who drowned and others who were killed in a stampede to cross a breakwater barrier, the Spanish government stated. Authorities in Ceuta reported that as many as 86 people have died.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez criticized the reaction of certain European Union leaders concerning the events in Ceuta, asserting that calls for Spain’s suspension from the EU’s borderless Schengen zone were “driven by prejudice, fake news, ignorance, or political interest.”
A handful of exhausted migrants who swam to Ceuta’s urban Tarajal beach on Saturday were met by soldiers who escorted them back across the border. Spain’s interior ministry indicated that the majority of those who entered the territory have already returned to Morocco.
“We are relentless against those who break the law,” Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told journalists in Ceuta on Saturday.
In response to questions about how this large-scale border breach could occur given the heavy security on both sides, Marlaska defended the Moroccan government, stating, “The events require an evaluation by Spain and Morocco.” He added that cooperation with its neighbors allowed Spain “to revert the situation in 24 hours.”
“Morocco is not a threat to Ceuta or to the rest of Spain. It is a reliable partner,” Marlaska emphasized.
EU leaders call for coordinated response
The leaders of 22 EU countries called for a coordinated response to the situation in Ceuta. In a letter to top EU officials, released by the Danish prime minister’s office, the countries urged the EU’s current Irish presidency to convene an extraordinary videoconference of the bloc’s interior ministers.
“We cannot allow uncontrolled mass crossings, the instrumentalization of migration or other hybrid threats to create the perception that illegal entry into the European Union is possible. That a migrant’s illegal entry can turn into legal stay,” the letter stated. “Such a perception would encourage further attempts, undermine confidence in our common migration policy and have repercussions for all Member States.”
The letter was signed by the leaders of various EU countries including Italy, Denmark, and Germany.
Sánchez also requested a videoconference of EU interior ministers to facilitate a common response and to reaffirm that the security of the EU’s external borders is a shared responsibility of all Member States, not solely those on the Union’s front line.
He condemned the reaction of certain EU nations, which he claimed had “chosen to attack Spain and to call for its temporary exclusion from the Schengen Area.”
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni threatened to suspend Italy’s open-border Schengen agreement with Spain, reintroducing border controls for people arriving from Spain by air and sea.
“In the current international context, the European Union cannot afford this kind of selfish, polarizing and unlawful reaction,” Sánchez wrote in his letter.
migrants head back into Morocco
Hundreds of migrants who recently crossed from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta returned across the border on Saturday, stating to an Associated Press reporter that they were going back “of their own free will” after experiencing what they described as degrading treatment on the Spanish side.
The migrants traversed a long stretch of wave breakers before re-entering Morocco through a small breach in the border fence. Moroccan police and soldiers observed the scene. Most of the migrants were Moroccans, with a smaller number from sub-Saharan Africa.
Hungry and angry, some barefoot or shirtless and others nursing visible injuries, they said they had “seen hell in Ceuta.”
Ouail Lamzeiz explained, “I decided to come back on my own. I spent eight days in Ceuta, and I was about to get a bed at the migrant center, but I hadn’t eaten for days. Even the Moroccans there didn’t help.”
His friend, Salah Eddine El Arrage, opted to return to Morocco after alleging that he was beaten by Spanish police.
Both men, along with others interviewed, reported spending nights in the forests around Ceuta due to a lack of shelter and often fought over food.
Othmane El Merzoug even stopped passersby to ask for a phone call, hoping to reach his family for money to return to his hometown, about 189 miles from the border.
The road linking the Moroccan town of Fnideq to the border was littered with the remnants of the previous night’s unrest, including burned-out vehicles and police barriers directing traffic toward the crossing.
“Life in this city has been disrupted as a result of the border incident,” remarked Ceuta’s President Juan Jesús Vivas. He noted that the return of people has begun satisfactorily but emphasized that the process must be completed.
In Tangier, roughly 46 miles from Ceuta, the main railway station buzzed with returning individuals, some sleeping on the ground, clearly exhausted.
Abdalah, a prospective migrant who asked to remain anonymous due to fears of retaliation, shared, “I tried to cross, but I failed. I stayed near the border with Ceuta for two days, but I couldn’t find anything to eat.”
Yet some of those who made it to Ceuta were determined to stay. Among them was Mohamed Hatri, a 23-year-old Moroccan, who stated, “They’ve closed everything down so that we can’t buy anything to eat, to force us to return to our country. But even if they close it down — we’re round to stay here, whether we’re hungry or not.”
