According to the NGO Caminando Fronteras, more than 11,000 people have died since 2018 in their attempt to reach Spain from the African continent. That’s six a day. The organization, created in 2002, collects a lot of data thanks to the tools it has put in place. On the one hand, migrants can give by telephone, in case of danger, the position of their boat and the number of people on board, which makes it possible to alert the emergency services. On the other hand, families of migrants communicate their own information. The NGO defines itself as a “Human Rights Observatory on the Euro-African Western Border”, further qualified as “necrofrontier”, so high is the balance sheet.
Two years ago, Helena Maleno, the founder of the collective, was alarmed in an interview at Release worsening mortality on the sea routes of migrants. The situation has not improved, far from it. “The tragedy experienced by people trying to reach Spain by crossing the various borders is beyond anything we might imagine,” deplores the NGO in a report released on Monday. According to his count, between the beginning of 2018 and the end of November 2022, 11,286 people died from 31 African countries but also from the Middle East and Asia. Among them, 1,272 women and 377 children.
Sea and land crossings
The Canary Islands route proved to be the most dangerous with 7,692 victims, or two thirds of the total. It is one of the four maritime crossing zones delimited by the organization: from Senegal and Mauritania to the Canary Islands, from Morocco to the Spanish Atlantic coast, from Morocco to the Mediterranean coast, and finally from Algeria to the Spanish coasts and the Balearic Islands. Two other entry points are terrestrial: the passages towards Ceuta and Melillalandlocked cities in Morocco.
One of the points denounced by the report is the lack of assistance on the Spanish side as well as on the Moroccan side, an accusation supported by several testimonies. Boats that have run out of engine or fuel, to which the fishing boats that cross them bring, for all help, only a few bottles of water. Calls for help launched by telephone which receive no response. The services of the two countries which pass the ball to each other according to the position of the sinking boat in relation to latitude 35°50′N, acting as a border in the Strait of Gibraltar. Or five Moroccan teenagers who set sail in Ceuta, in November 2021, in a derisory rowing “toy boat”. The request for assistance from their families did not lead to any intervention. They never heard from them once more.
Two weights, two measures
Conversely, Caminando Fronteras describes the device launched following the discovery, in 2019, of an empty kayak in the port of Alicante, with on board papers belonging to a Spanish citizen. “An active search operation mobilizing all available means, including air, was immediately launched.” The “victim” was quickly found safe and sound: she was spearfishing without noticing that her kayak had drifted. Two weights, two measures.
Sometimes, accuses the report, it is the rescuers themselves who cause the accident. Example : “Boarding on the wrong side of the boat, causing it to overturn and its passengers to fall overboard. Following which, no deployment of means to find and fish out the survivors and / or the possible corpses.
The NGO questions the modes of cooperation between the different countries: “The Spanish State, together with countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania and Senegal, has arbitrarily established models of bilateral migration policy, thus considerably reducing the protection of the rights of people on the move.” A tragic illustration: the joint repression by the Spanish and Moroccan police forces of a mass entry to Melilla, June 24. The massacre, the toll of which, according to the sources, amounts to 23 or 37 dead, “shown the whole world what the policy of control is all regarding […] under cover of a good neighborly agreement” between the two countries.
In conclusion, Walking Frontiers souligne : “In 2022 alone, Europe handled borders differently for people fleeing war in Ukraine. Laws providing them with protection have been applied swiftly and unreservedly, while for decades these rights have been denied to people fleeing other conflicts.” And still are.
