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A30 world news
Diabierna 21 Mei 2021

Spain, Morocco turn focus to young migrants stuck at border

(AP) — With border crossings of migrants apparently under control, that he had crossed on Monday when Moroccan police announced that the
Spain and Morocco turned their attention Thursday to the plight of border was open.
hundreds of teenagers and children stranded on both sides of their
frontier amid one of the biggest diplomatic spats between the two “The Moroccans told us, go go, pass pass, they let us cross. I was just swim-
countries in recent years. ming and I saw people crossing so I went too,” he said from inside a holding
pen with other youngsters.
The risks facing youths caught in the middle of the rift remained visible even
as the flow of migrants that Morocco let cross over into Spain’s North Africa “They have us locked as if we were in a prison. Morocco was a prison and
enclave of Ceuta appeared to have stopped. Spain is now also a prison.”

Spanish police recovered the body of a young man from Mediterranean surf The Spanish government has announced that 200 of the young migrants who
near Ceuta’s Tarajal beach, the European soil many Moroccans and other Afri- were already in the city of 85,000 before this week’s sudden surge in arrivals
cans tried to reach by swimming around the border that separates the city from would be transferred to the mainland in coming days in order to leave space
Morocco. Another young man was confirmed dead in the water on Monday. in government-run facilities in Ceuta. Under Spain’s laws, the minors remain
under the care of regional authorities until their relatives can be found or they
Meanwhile, hundreds of unaccompanied minors were crammed into charity- come of age.
run warehouses for a 10-day compulsory coronavirus quarantine under police
watch. Spain’s Interior Ministry said 850 migrants under 18 years old were left Municipal authorities for Ceuta set up a hotline for the parents on the Moroc-
of those who had crossed since Monday. can side who are missing their children and believe them to be in the Spanish
city.
Looking for some extra clothes to protect himself from the evening cold, a The situation was also chaotic across the border in Fnideq, where people
14-year-old boy who had stayed in the warehouse explained that his parents roamed the streets begging for food or money to return to their hometowns
had agreed to his attempt to start a life in Spain. after they were expelled from Ceuta or stopped at the border. Moroccan au-
thorities sent buses to pick some people up and take them to Casablanca.
“They see that if I come here I can have a future,” said the boy, who had trav-
eled from Tetouan, a city 40 kilometers (about 25 miles) south of the Spanish Moroccan security forces clashed well into the night with dozens of mostly
border. “You see your parents can’t work, the education system is very weak. young men who had gathered on a boulevard leading to the border with Spain,
What can I say? I cannot even tell you what people eat.” and were hoping to follow the thousands who in previous days swam around
of jumped the border fences.
The Associated Press is not using the boy’s name. It doesn’t normally name
children without permission from their parents, and the identity of his parents The scuffles broke out when police tried to break up the groups of people who
couldn’t be obtained. had gathered and set fire to a barricade blocking the street. The police moved
back but later dispersed the group.
It appears that other children crossed without their parents’ knowledge.
Authorities in Ceuta said Thursday that no migrants crossed overnight into
One 18-year-old boy, who had been in Ceuta for a year, said he was called by the city.
his parents to help search for his younger brother, who had come over in the
recent surge without his parent’s consent. In previous days, the border between Morocco and Ceuta became porous fol-
lowing warnings from the Moroccan government to Spain that it would face
A 15-year-old boy from Fnideq, the town just across the frontier, told the AP consequences over Madrid’s decision to provide coronavirus treatment to the
head of a militant group fighting for the independence of the Western Sahara
region annexed by Rabat.

Brahim Ghali, head of the Polisario Front, flew into Spain in mid-April with
an Algerian passport that had a false identity.

In an apparent attempt to move toward mending relations, Spanish security
forces said their Moroccan counterparts agreed Thursday to establish a proto-
col system for the return of the migrants.

Publicly, however, the dispute went on.

“The Spanish media’s hostility towards Morocco, based on fake news, cannot
obscure the real origin of the crisis, which is the reception by Madrid under
a false identity of the leader of the separatist militias of the Polisario,” Moroc-
can Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita told state news agency MAP, in the first
public comment on the issue by a leading government official.
Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles, for her part, said that the country
won’t accept being pressured with “the use of minors.”

“We are not going to accept being blackmailed,” Robles told Spain’s public ra-
dio. “Spain’s integrity is not negotiable and is not at stake. We are going to use
all necessary means to guarantee the territorial integrity and to keep vigilance
on our frontiers.”

“You don’t play with Spain,” she added.

Spain said that more than 8,000 people crossed into Spanish territory in 48
hours, although at least 6,000 had either been expelled, many in bulk push-
backs criticized by rights groups. Many of those who crossed also returned
voluntarily after finding no shelter in Ceuta or possibilities to continue onto
the European mainland across the Strait of Gibraltar.

Ayoub, 16, was among those who was sent back after trying three times to
cross over. He said he was giving up and taking a bus home to Temara, near
Rabat, before he runs out of money.

“I’ll be back when the border reopens,” he said.