CEUTA, Spain\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Spain on Saturday installed a 1,600-foot barrier on the sea border between its North African territory of Ceuta and neighboring Morocco after tens of thousands of migrants breached the frontier earlier in the week.<\/p>\n
At least 67 migrants died, including some who drowned and others who were killed in a stampede to cross a breakwater barrier, the Spanish government said Saturday. The sudden arrival of 50,000 to 60,000 migrants in the territory between Thursday and Friday sparked a humanitarian crisis and reignited the immigration debate in Europe and beyond, though most of the migrants soon went back. <\/p>\n
Critics of Spain\u2019s socialist government, notably right and far-right politicians, seized upon the dramatic images of crowds storming into Ceuta, which sits on the Strait of Gibraltar at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea and has been a Spanish possession since 1580. Spain\u2019s migration policy has focused on granting legal status to workers lacking authorization to boost its economy, in contrast with anti-migration and pro-deportation policies being promoted across much of the EU and in the U.S. <\/p>\n
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez denounced the reaction of some European Union leaders to the events in Ceuta, saying calls for Spain to be suspended from the EU\u2019s borderless Schengen zone were \u201cdriven by prejudice, fake news, ignorance, or political interest.\u201d Spain in recent years has had fewer illegal migrants than Mediterranean neighbors Italy and Greece.<\/p>\n
On Saturday morning, a few migrants who swam to Ceuta\u2019s urban Tarajal beach were met by soldiers who escorted them across the border. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are relentless against those who break the law,\u201d Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told journalists. <\/p>\n
Asked how the breach could have happened given the heavy security on both sides of the border and whether Morocco posed a threat to Ceuta, Grande-Marlaska defended the government in Rabat.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe events require an evaluation by Spain and Morocco,\u201d he said. But it was the cooperation with its neighbors that allowed Spain \u201cto revert the situation in 24 hours.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMorocco is not a threat to Ceuta, or to the rest of Spain. It is a reliable partner,\u201d Grande-Marlaska emphasized. <\/p>\n
EU calls for coordinated response<\/p>\n
Other European Union countries called for urgent talks and a coordinated response to the situation in Ceuta.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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\u2019s illegal entry can turn into legal stay,\u201d said a letter to top EU officials, released Saturday by the Danish prime minister\u2019s office. \u201cSuch a perception would encourage further attempts, undermine confidence in our common migration policy and have repercussions for all Member States.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leaders of Italy, Denmark, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia and Sweden signed the letter asking the EU\u2019s current Irish presidency to convene a videoconference of interior ministers.<\/p>\n
S\u00e1nchez also asked for a videoconference of EU interior ministers to \u201cenable us to establish a common response to situations of this kind and reaffirm that the security of our external borders is a shared responsibility of all Member States, and not only of those on the Union\u2019s front line.\u201d<\/p>\n
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has threatened to suspend Italy\u2019s open-border Schengen agreement with Spain, and Italy was reimposing border controls for people arriving from Spain by air and sea.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the current international context, the European Union cannot afford this kind of selfish, polarizing and unlawful reaction,\u201d S\u00e1nchez wrote in his letter. <\/p>\n
Migrants head back to Morocco<\/p>\n
Hundreds of migrants continued to make their way back to Morocco on Saturday. Hungry and angry, some barefoot or shirtless and others nursing visible injuries, they said they were leaving Ceuta after what they described as degrading treatment on the Spanish side of the border.<\/p>\n
Migrants walked along a long stretch of wave breakers before slipping into Morocco through a small breach in the border fence. Most of the migrants were Moroccans, and a smaller number were from sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cI decided to come back on my own,\u201d said Ouail Lamzeiz. \u201cI spent eight days in Ceuta, and I was about to get a bed at the migrant center, but I hadn\u2019t eaten for days. Even the Moroccans there didn\u2019t help,\u201d he added, showing a document supporting his account.<\/p>\n
Migrants said they spent their nights sleeping in the forests around Ceuta because they could not find shelter, and they often fought over food.<\/p>\n
Othmane El Merzoug asked passersby to borrow a phone so he could reach his family and ask them to send money for the journey back to his hometown, about 190 miles from the border.<\/p>\n
Life along the border was disrupted<\/p>\n
Along Ceuta\u2019s Tarajal beach, sunbathers largely ignored the streams of migrants walking toward the border.<\/p>\n
Ceuta resident Mohamed Abdelatif, 21, said the border rush had ruptured the city\u2019s peace.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is, it\u2019s not good,\u201d Abdelatif said, before wading into the water with his girlfriend.<\/p>\n
To reach Ceuta, on the northern African coast, migrants often swim from the Moroccan town of Fnideq, covering about 3 miles to reach Spanish territory. In response to the influx, Spain deployed its armed forces and additional police in Ceuta. On the Moroccan side, security forces clashed with migrants. Authorities used water cannons, tear gas and warning shots to try to turn back migrants.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, the road linking Fnideq to the border crossing bore the scars of the unrest. Burned-out vehicles sat along the roadside, while the acrid smell of smoke still hung in the air. Water cannons remained stationed nearby.<\/p>\n
\u201cLife in this city has been disrupted as a result of the border incident,\u201d said Ceuta President Juan Jes\u00fas Vivas. \u201cThe return of people has begun satisfactorily, but the process must be completed.\u201d <\/p>\n
Determined to stay<\/p>\n
But some who made it to Ceuta say they do not intend to go back. Among them was Mohamed Hatri, a 23-year-old Moroccan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve closed everything down so that we can\u2019t buy anything to eat, to force us to return to our country,\u201d he said, adding that he and others were determined to stay \u201cwhether we\u2019re hungry or not.\u201d <\/p>\n
Ru\u00edz, Naishadham and Oubachir write for the Associated Press. Oubachir reported from Fnideq. AP writers Renata Brito in Barcelona, Spain, and Elena Becatoros in Athens contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CEUTA, Spain\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Spain on Saturday installed a 1,600-foot barrier on the sea border between its North African territory of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1124723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5312],"tags":[6180,143021,2000,299,306052,306050,2199,17272,32635,6489,6900,21029,306051,103370,104,6507],"class_list":["post-1124722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-border","tag-ceuta","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european-union-leader","tag-fnideq","tag-italy","tag-letter","tag-migrant","tag-morocco","tag-other","tag-saturday","tag-sea-barrier","tag-situation","tag-spain","tag-water"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117022175184444621","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1124722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1124722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1124722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1124723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1124722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1124722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1124722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}