By Jose Luis Carter Miramar. Holy General of Workers' Solidarity ---- At the end
of June this year, at least 37 African migrant workers died trying to jump theMelilla fence, which protects the border between the Spanish State and theKingdom of Morocco. The brutal intervention of the Moroccan police is accompaniedby the passivity of the Spanish security forces, who do not intervene when theagents of the Alawite kingdom detain and beat migrants who have already crossedthe border, introducing themselves into national territory. ---- The Spanishgovernment is undeterred by what happened. The president of the government, PedroSánchez, shows his understanding of the actions of the Moroccan agents, subjectedto the "violence" of the migrants. Meanwhile, various sources indicate that theMoroccan gendarmerie is digging mass graves to bury the deceased. Even today, theexact number of dead is not known.The Spanish government acts as guardian of one of the main European borders. TheWestern Mediterranean and Canary Islands route is one of the busiest routes ofentry for African migrants in Europe. Thousands of people lose their lives everyyear in clandestine trips made in cayucos - makeshift boats - hidden under thechassis of trucks and vans that cross the borders of Ceuta and Melilla, orjumping the fences that separate these cities from the rest of Africa .The situation has become especially ungovernable in recent times. And tounderstand what is happening, it would be appropriate to dwell on two of theaspects that have marked the last few months of tension on the border: theoutsourcing of immigration control to the Kingdom of Morocco, and the strongcontradictions between said kingdom and Spain, after the recognition of Moroccansovereignty over Western Sahara by Donald Trump.First of all, we must bear in mind that the European Union, given theimpossibility of stopping the migratory flows multiplied by wars and processes ofeconomic devastation unleashed by Western intervention itself in scenarios suchas Syria, Libya or the Sahel, has decided to outsource the control of theseflows. The idea is simple: pay transit countries to prevent migrants fromreaching Europe's borders.Thus, the massive flow of asylum and refugee seekers from Syria has been limited,thanks to a great agreement with Turkey, which decided to establish refugee campson its own soil, in exchange for a strong injection of community money. Somecountries intend to go further: legislative projects have been presented in theparliaments of Denmark and the United Kingdom so that asylum seekers are confinedin other countries, such as Rwanda or Albania, while their applications areresolved. Spain, on the other hand, has entrusted a large part of its migrationpolicy to the payment of large sums to Morocco, intended, directly or indirectly,for the Alawite kingdom to create concentration camps for migrants and extremesurveillance on the common border.Of course, this outsourcing of immigration control tasks excludes any oversightof respect for the human rights of migrants. The arbitrariness of the Moroccanpolice or the Libyan and Turkish coastguards has been underlined by allorganizations for the defense of migrants. Ill-treatment of all kinds is theorder of the day, but the European media suspends an obvious cloak of silence, oneverything that happens beyond borders, and only reports on migratory flows whenthere is a massive jump to border fences or an avalanche of canoes.Moreover, the European Union has set up its own police structure to controlcommunity borders: Frontex. However, Frontex also acts controversially. Afternumerous complaints indicating that the agency carries out hot returns -withoutany judicial procedure and in the middle of the sea-, which sometimes end in thedeath of migrants, the director of Frontex has had to resign. In addition, thepolice forces of the Member States sometimes come into conflict with Frontex.This explains why the agency has not been deployed, for example, on the Spanishborders with Morocco, due to the reluctance of the Hispanic police.On the other hand, immigration control legislation is tightening throughoutEurope. First of all, we must bear in mind the racism underlying the legal actionof the European institutions. While the possibility of temporary protection forrefugees from Ukraine is activated, those who come from Syria or the Sahel-spaces also at war, but with populations of normally darker complexions- arerejected at the borders or subjected to "hot" returns. ". The so-famous "Europeansocial model" views those fleeing wars or human rights violations differently,depending on their place of origin and the color of their skin. On the otherhand, "hot returns" are legalized by the European Court of Human Rights, whichpresupposes that "well-behaved" asylum seekers can present their applications atthe offices established at border posts and must not jump fences or reaching theshores in overcrowded inflatable boats. The good gentlemen of the Court seem tobe unaware of peculiar details, such as the fact that the Moroccan policeinsistently arrest all and all migrants who approach the Asylum Offices on theSpanish border, in forceful compliance with the outsourcing of immigrationcontrol functions by part of the Kingdom of Spain itself, as denounced byorganizations in solidarity with migrants.The end result of this policy, moreover, is disturbing for Europe. The countriesof transit have learned that the externalization of the control of migratoryflows gives them the possibility of exerting pressure on European policies.Earlier this year, the EU accused Belarus of using "hybrid warfare" tactics byfailing to stop asylum seekers flocking to the Polish border. Morocco, for itspart, has used migratory pressure as an element of impact to bring about a changein Spanish policy on Western Sahara, thus provoking a bundle of geopoliticaltensions in the Mediterranean that are difficult to resolve. We will try toexplain it briefly.At the end of his mandate, US President Donald Trump recognizes Moroccansovereignty over Western Sahara in exchange for Morocco officially recognizingIsrael and initiating extensive policies of collaboration with the Jewishgovernment, as other Middle Eastern countries had done. The collaboration withIsrael includes Morocco having access to the Pegasus spy program, which theAlawite Kingdom uses profusely to intercept the communications of politicians,soldiers and businessmen from other countries, including Algeria, France and,very presumably, Spain.After the recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara, the Alawitekingdom pressures various countries of the European Union to do the same. At thesame time, the Polisario Front - a political organization that hegemonizes therepresentation of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic - restarts militaryactivities against Morocco, after an attempt to make itself known through civildisobedience actions that are quickly repressed by the Moroccan Army.Meanwhile, the Court of Justice of the European Union declares the tradeagreement between the EU and Morocco null and void, in everything that refers toeconomic resources located in the occupied Sahara, given that the genuinerepresentatives of the people have not been consulted. Saharan. Brahim Gali,leader of the Polisario Front, is admitted to a Spanish hospital to be treatedfor a Covid-19 infection, at the request of the Algerian government, and in analmost clandestine manner, which provokes a strong response from Morocco.The Moroccan response is paradigmatic of the new power that the externalizationof border control grants to the countries of transit of migrants. Moroccowithdraws all surveillance on the fences of Ceuta and Melilla and, for 24 hours,thousands of Africans enter these cities, without the Spanish police being ableto stop the avalanche. A short time later, the Spanish president publicly statedthat the Moroccan solution to the problem of Western Sahara -a limited autonomyof the territory under Alawite sovereignty- "is the most viable", causing therupture of friendly relations between Spain and Algeria, which still have notbeen normalized.It must be borne in mind that Spain continues to be, legally, the administeringpower of Western Sahara, a territory that the UN considers "in the process ofdecolonization". Most of the Sahara is under military occupation by Morocco, andthe independent organizations of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic areconcentrated in the Tindouf refugee camps, on the border with Algeria. ManySaharawi citizens even have Spanish identity documents, since the territory was aSpanish province until the end of the seventies, and the Kingdom of Spain has thelegal responsibility, according to International Law, that the decolonizationprocess of the territory is carried out in a way that respects the will of theSaharawi people.So Morocco forces the change of 40 years of Spanish foreign policy respectful ofthe UN resolutions regarding Western Sahara, although extremely passive, usingIsraeli technological tools and control of the management of migratory flows toCeuta and Melilla. that the Spanish government itself has outsourced.Everything seems to be going well in the best of worlds. The Moroccan, Libyan orTurkish security forces -internationally known for their lack of respect forhuman rights- guard the European borders, so that the citizens of Germany,Holland or Spain can ignore what happens beyond social networks.Migrants and refugees die at sea, in the desert, skewered on fences, beaten bythe guardians of order, crowded into makeshift camps, concentration camps, aresold as slaves in Libya, work without rights in European metropolises, They are,as Eduardo Galeano wrote: "The nobodys: the children of nobody, the owners ofnothing. The nobodies: the nobodies, the none, the hare running, life dying,screwed up, screwed up."The Spanish people, once crossed by strong currents of solidarity with migrants,now seem anesthetized by the new geopolitics of migration, the propaganda of theextreme right and the silence of the media that do not want to confront racism,as if maintaining an empty discourse could prevent the spread of hate. Meanwhile,the governments of transit countries have learned the new power that repressingthese workers from the South in search of a future gives them, and they kill themor let them pass according to their own interests. "The nobodies, who cost lessthan the bullet that kills them."______________________The article in the magazine Crisis of Ecuadorhttps://www.facebook.com/Soliobrera/posts/pfbid026Yct69Z62boDwjGJuuMaNkayziTwX46Mj9EE9JtVMEWsA87YMY3BqoPuDMqros7El_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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