Morocco deports migrants
on October 10, 2005
Category: Immigration Europe
After being expelled from Spanish North Africa territory and dumped in the desert, West AFrican migrants are being deported by the Moroccan authorities back to Senegal. The Spanish authorities have illegally expelled the migrants and by sending them back to Morocco have put them at risk of further hardship and brutality by Morocco which has an appalling human rights record. The migrants are now trapped and cornered like hunted animals between the Moroccan desert and the Spanish enclaves of Cueta and Melilla on the coast.
The mainly young men from various West Africa countries have spent sometimes months trying to reach Morocco the last staging point before crossing to Spain and to Europe. The migrants risk their lives to find work in Spain and Spain relies on their cheap labour to grow the fruit and vegetables that feed Europe. Many of those who have reached Morocco already owe huge sums of money to traffickers in Morocco and in Spain - money that will have to be repaid whether they are back in their home countries, stuck in limbo in Spanish African territory or have reached the mainland.
The cities of Spain are full of young men who set up "stalls" on street corners with just a piece of cloth with their wares, selling counterfeit watches, bags etc, cheap jewelry, umbrellas etc. Lost invisible young men living on the margins of society, and vulnerable to police harassment and local gangsters.
Tags: Morocco Spain Migrants Fortress Europe
Sphere: Related Content
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3 Comments so far
1. Orikinla Osinachi
October 12th, 2005 at 12:42 am
Personally, I don’t like Africans engaging in desperate measures to migrate to America and Europe. Then, they must be ready to face the critical consequences of their violations of the territorial boundaries of the Western nations.
Imagine how I felt when I watched a CNN documentary showing Nigerians crossing the desert, because they wanted to migrate to Spain.
May I commend you for your laudable citizen journalism.
You are an example worthy of emulation to all Nigerians for the high profile and world class standard of Black Looks.
2. Niek Feryn
October 12th, 2005 at 9:57 am
The sad thing is that hardly anything can persuade those people not making the trip. My wife’s Nigerian and everytime she tries to tell the people back home that Europe is not the land of milk and honey, they they probabaly will be worse off when they are in Europe, they just don’t want to listen.
Either they call you jealous, or they say that you don’t want them to succeed
3. Orikinla Osinachi
October 16th, 2005 at 11:47 pm
I am proudly Nigerian and only Nigerians of the lunatic fringe would be so desperate to flee Nigeria when they are not threatened activists.
They have not seen the horrors and terrors I have seen and I have not fled the country.
These desperados are not even political activists going on exile. They have just gone round the bend.