The Spanish government has rejected accusations that its security forces acted irresponsibly and exacerbated a tragedy in which dozens of African migrants were killed on the border with Morocco earlier this year.
On June 24th an estimated 1,700 migrants, mostly from Sudan, attempted to reach the Spanish city of Melilla in North Africa from neighbouring Morocco by scaling the border fence. However, after clashes with police at least 23 migrants were killed, according to Spanish and Moroccan authorities.
Other sources put the death toll much higher, with the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras reporting that 72 people died. Several hundred more migrants were injured.
The tragedy drew international attention to Melilla’s status as a magnet for migrants given that, along with its sister city Ceuta, it has the only land border between Africa and Europe.
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“Spain is a country that provides solidarity to those who flee their country and persecution and it is welcoming to those who do so peacefully,” Spanish interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told congress, in a parliamentary session in which he was asked about the incident.
Although he said he regretted the loss of lives, the minister said that police at the scene had acted in a “firm, calm and proportionate” way. He also repeated Spanish government claims that the migrants had acted violently as they tried to scale the fence.
“We are a country which in no way can allow its borders and its security forces to be attacked in a violent and intolerable way,” he said.
However, some of those who managed to cross the border have said that the Moroccan police trapped many of the migrants in an area near the border fence and beat them, causing many of the deaths.
Video footage posted on social media showed several dozen migrants packed together on the ground near the border, with bodies piled on top of each other. Many of the migrants appeared injured while many others showed no signs of movement.
In a report published in July, Morocco’s National Council for Human Rights criticised the Spanish security forces for their handling of the situation, stating that their “reluctance to provide help and first aid ... probably had the effect of increasing the number of dead and injured”.
In the parliamentary session on the tragedy, Maria Dantas, of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), said the migrants were “murdered in a mouse trap”.
“[Mr Grande-Marlaska] has justified the police’s actions, which I think had an unacceptable result given the deaths of dozens of people,” Jon Iñarritu, a congressman for the leftist Basque EH Bildu party who has investigated the case, told The Irish Times.
Mr Iñarritu said the minister had not clarified reports that Moroccan border guards had entered Spanish territory during the incident, where he said rubber bullets and gas canisters had been found afterwards.
“Why did Moroccan police cross into Spanish territory?” he said. “[We don’t know] if they activated the protocol for cross-border help, the chronology of the deaths that were taking place, or of the mistreatment and abuses being committed by Moroccan police against injured people — there are endless questions which have still not been answered.”
The congressman said that an enclosed area where many of the migrants had been trapped and had died was Spanish territory, according to the land registry.
