Roundups against sub-Saharan migrants in several moroccan cities.

Since last January 2008, as it has been happening in last years in moroccan cities with important sub-saharan communities on their way towards Europe, police roundups are taking place and undocumented migrants have being deported towards the Algerian desert border.

Since autumn 2005, after the tremendous events of Ceuta and Melilla, where tens of people died attempting to cross the border wall, arbitrary detentions became the habitual police practice to control the mobility of subsaharian migrants in Morocco.

In 2005 and 2006 detentions were massive (roundups involved up to 400 people) and media coverage mobilized public opinion and social movements both in Morocco and in Europe. In the last two years the police practices have been much more molecular, with daily detentions of small groups of people in different places, and mobilizations have been more and more difficult to organize, as it happened in november 2007 during the Sarkozy visit in Rabat and Tanger, and in the last days in Rabat, Casablanca and Nador.

Moroccan civil society associations and migrant support groups affirm these control measures are the consequence of the need of Moroccan government to fiscally justify the economic support of European Union for control on migration flows. This process implied an externalization of border control hired to private companies, they add.

In Rabat, in last two months, more than 130 detentions took place, usually late in the afternoon and in meeting-points of migrant like, internet cafes and marketplaces, in Hay Nahda I, G5 o Yacoub el Mansou. Even refugees and asylum seekers have been detained - though ins some cases they have been released if they remembered their ACNUR dossier number. Detained migrant are then brought to police station, without any possibility of communication, waiting to be deported to Oujda, 600 km to south west, on the desert border with Algeria. Mobilizations and protests have been organized to stop deportation, but have been effective only to avoid detention and deportation of refugees and asylum seekers.

In the middle of the desert, Oujda is militarized since 1995, due to the border conflict with Algeria. Moroccan police release detained migrants next to Oujda: they get back their mobile phones and police show them the way towards Algeria. Usually they organize themselves in small groups by community (5-6 people) and try to go back to Oujda, walking for more than one hour and without any direction through the desert. In the University campus of Oujda more than 200 people sleep every night, in favelas that suffered many police attacks in the last months. Here it does not exist the possibility to access to food and health care.

(...)

In the last ten days, roundups have been continuous and migrants communities are afraid that massive
detentions and deportations are going to happen again. In this context and seen the responsibility of European Union, migrants colectives and asssociations in Morocco call for support from European social movements to stop detentions, and demand to respect personal rights of undocuments migrants in Morocco.

ziga-zaga, melilla, 07/02/08 - ziga-zaga is an activist, film maker working since many years with migrants and refugees in Morocco