# taz.de -- Migration policy in Morocco: A stable part of the EU border regime | |
> For a long while, Morocco played the role of border guard to Europe. | |
> Liveable prospects for migrants emerged here temporarily. Since that | |
> time, repression has again become the order of the day. | |
Bild: A glove hangs from a broken barbed wireat the spanish exclave Ceuta in Mo… | |
On 7 June 2013, the Moroccan government and the European Union signed an | |
accord on a so-called mobility partnership. At issue was one of the | |
bilateral agreements that currently exist between the European Union and | |
eight states: the Cabo Verdean islands, the Republic of Moldava, Georgia, | |
Azerbaijan, Armenia, Tunisia and Morocco. Morocco was the first | |
Mediterranean state to enter such an agreement; Tunisia followed on 3 March | |
2014. | |
On the EU side, these bilateral agreements deal chiefly with the offer of | |
visa facilitations for certain categories of citizens of Morocco, Tunisia, | |
etc.; the central counter-offer on the other side is the respective state's | |
obligation to “take back“ migrants who have been deported from Europe, or | |
who are not welcome there. For the latter side, the obligation of | |
re-acceptance applies not only to citizens of the receiving state itself, | |
but also to citizens of third states who have verifiably traveled through | |
Morocco. | |
As human rights activist Ramy Khouili observed in an article in the | |
Huffington Post on 27 October 2015, with regards to visa facilitations, the | |
agreement offers nothing more than statements of intent, whereas the | |
objectives in the section on “taking back“ migrants rejected from Europe | |
exhibit a concrete, compulsory quality. | |
Morocco has long been a country whose citizens attempted to emigrate. Many | |
of them have resettled, for instance, in France, Belgium, and Spain, and in | |
part, in the 1970s, in the Rhine-Ruhr region of West Germany as well. | |
Continuing to the present, young people lacking opportunities in Moroccan | |
society are still trying to leave its territory and head toward Europe. On | |
1 December 2013, the Moroccan online newspaper Bladi.net issued a report | |
based on data from Spanish Minister of the Interior Jorge Fernández Díaz, | |
stating that in the period from 2002 to 2012, about 47,000 Moroccan | |
citizens had entered Spain “illegally“. | |
## Ceuta and Melilla | |
Currently, in any case, when this country on the north-western tip of | |
Africa is broached as an issue in regards to migration policy and EU | |
relations, the discussion revolves not around its own citizens, but around | |
citizens of third states who are entering Europe, or trying to reach the | |
EU-Europe, by crossing Moroccan territory. | |
One of the European Union's external borders runs through Morocco. Not | |
between Morocco and the EU, but through Morocco itself. Two Spanish | |
enclaves – that is, territory belonging to the EU – are located on Moroccan | |
soil. For historical reasons rooted in the colonial past, the two cities of | |
Ceuta and Melilla – which have a population of around 170,000, taken | |
together – are still regarded administratively as part of Spain, and | |
therefore, of the EU. | |
During the night between 28 and 29 September 2005, and again between 5 and | |
6 October 2005, massive attempts to cross this border occurred, at the | |
external border of Ceuta in the first attempt, and at that of Melilla in | |
the second. Several hundred migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, tried | |
to storm the guarded border fence and knock it over with the sheer force of | |
their combined weight. Their chosen tactic has been used repeatedly, and is | |
still being applied today. The suppression of this collective attempt to | |
cross the border left 14 people dead. To this day, not one person in | |
authority has ever been convicted in this matter; Moroccan and Spanish | |
border officials passed the blame back and forth between each other for | |
years. | |
## Raids as the answer | |
The fatal incidents in Ceuta and Melilla catalysed a discussion in many EU | |
countries about the EU's external borders, their alleged protection and the | |
tacit acceptance of sacrificing human lives to this end. There were protest | |
demonstrations in several EU countries, as well as campaigns, public | |
discussion events and books published on these topics. Awareness increased | |
– at least within certain circles open to the subject – about the issues of | |
the sometimes lethal regime along the EU's external border. | |
In Morocco itself, however, the outcomes of the incidents were utterly | |
different. Shortly afterwards, massive organised raids and arrests were | |
carried out among sub-Saharan Africans. | |
3,000 people were forcibly loaded onto buses and hauled away from the zone | |
near the border. At least 1,000 of them were abandoned in the desert in | |
southern Morocco – somewhere in the vicinity of the border to Algeria or | |
Mauritania (in the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara). Moroccan authorities | |
have consistently denied that this action took place. However, once they | |
had come under international pressure, these very same authorities called | |
for search parties to locate those abandoned before they could die of | |
thirst. Observers consider it extremely likely that there were also | |
fatalities in this case. Still, Moroccan authorities categorically deny | |
this as well. | |
Some time later, further push-back actions occurred in the desert border | |
region of southern Morocco; for instance, in December 2006. But in this | |
case, 42 migrants, 36 men and six women, – who had already been officially | |
granted recognised refugee status by the UN refugee aid agency UNHCR – | |
filed charges afterwards. With the help of the Spanish non-governmental | |
organisation “Commission for Refugees“, they brought the case before the UN | |
Committee Against Torture. On 8 April 2013 , the Moroccan online newspaper | |
Ya biladi (translated: “You, my country“) announced an investigation of the | |
occurrence by that committee. | |
On 2 July 2013, another massive raid on sub-Saharan migrants was carried | |
out in northern Morocco, in Tangier – particularly in the city district of | |
Boukhalef. 700 people were arrested, packed onto buses and taken, this | |
time, not to the desert in the South, but instead “only“ as far as Oujda, | |
several hundred kilometres away to the East. On this occasion, a | |
39-year-old Congolese man named Toussaint-Alex Mianzoukouta, a French | |
teacher at a private school in Rabat who held a legal residence permit for | |
Morocco, was thrown from a moving bus during a violent conflict with the | |
police. Severely wounded, he was admitted to a hospital, where he lay in a | |
coma for several days. On 5 August 2013, his death was publicly announced. | |
## Rabat “is sleeping“ | |
In 2006, Morocco's involvement in the border regime of the EU began to | |
intensify. On 10 and 11 July 2006, at a ministerial conference in the | |
capital city Rabat entitled, “Euro-African Ministerial Conference on | |
Migration and Development“, the so-called “Rabat Process“ was initiated. | |
Over fifty West and North African states and EU member states took part at | |
this meeting. The participating states hold joint conferences at which | |
causes of flight and migrations are debated, purportedly leading to | |
recommendations on how, through “improved development co-operation“, | |
irregular emigration in the area can be put to a stop. In practice, this | |
intention has proven to be a mere fig leaf. | |
With over fifty states participating, the “Rabat Process“ may be too | |
cumbersome to yield concrete results. At follow-up conferences on 25 | |
November 2008 in Paris, in the context of the French EU council presidency | |
at that time, as well as on 23 November 2011 in the Senegalese capital of | |
Dakar, attempts were made to intensify the co-operative work. In any case, | |
essential decisions about the transnational migration regime continued to | |
be made most often within bilateral relationships between states, or | |
between the EU and individual states in the global South, rather than | |
within this multilateral framework. In 2015, the media of record in France | |
referred to the “Rabat Process“ as having “gone to sleep“. Presently, | |
however, driving forces in the EU are trying to reactivate this process and | |
to involve further African states in the migration control regime, through | |
measures including the “Khartoum Process“ since 2014 and the Valletta | |
Conference of November 2015, among others. | |
In some parts of Moroccan society, conspicuous problems of racism persist | |
in connection with the presence of migrants. In part, this phenomena is | |
closely related to religious resentments, especially against African | |
non-Muslims. | |
In an interview on 14 July 2103 for the Moroccan information portal | |
H24info, Hicham Rachidi, general secretary of the anti-racist, Rabat-based | |
human rights association GADEM, stated that his group had observed since | |
2006 that, “in many cases, sub-Saharan migrants who went to police stations | |
to file charges of discrimination or racist expressions were then | |
arrested“. He also criticised the police for planned actions with the | |
supposed objective of halting “illegal“ immigration: in certain city | |
districts in Rabat, Casablanca, Fes, Nador and Oudja, police apparently | |
organised the actions with the aim to “absolutely hunt black people down“. | |
## Violent racism | |
On August 12 of the same year, in the wake of a dispute with a “native“ | |
Moroccan man over occupying space on a bus, thirty-year-old Senegalese | |
citizen Ismaila Faye was stabbed to death at the Rabat main bus station. | |
Afterward, many Moroccan media sources referred to the crime as | |
“anti-foreigner“, whereas Cameroon citizen Eric Williams – an activist wi… | |
a refugee association – stated that within a single week, fifteen racist | |
attacks against migrants in Morocco had occurred, and evidently the murder | |
was only the tragic climax. In the following week, on 19 August 2013, about | |
300 people demonstrated in the Moroccan capital of Rabat to do honour to | |
Ismaila Faye. On social networks, as well, many Moroccans denounced racism | |
against black people in their country. Late in the afternoon of 14 | |
September 2013, a sit-in protest against racism was held before the | |
Moroccan Parliament, following a conference on 11 September at the premises | |
of the bar association. | |
Then for the first time in Morocco's history, from 21 March to 20 June | |
2014, a broadly conceived anti-racism campaign was mounted, offering | |
cultural activities and events. Its official slogan was the phrase, “Je ne | |
m’appelle pas Azzi“(“My name is not ‚Azzi‘“, referring to a racist … | |
and it was supported by an alliance of civil society organisations called | |
the “Coordination Centre for Universal Rights of Residence“. A number of | |
intellectuals also supported the campaign. It seems that it did contribute | |
toward changing the mentality in the country in some measure, or at least | |
toward questioning racist certainties. Hardly any open displays of racism | |
in the raw, such as those that flared up in the summer and fall of 2013, | |
have been recorded since then. The campaign also had a stroke of luck, in | |
that it ran concurrently with the Moroccan government's operation to | |
legalise illegal immigrants, though this had not been the initial intent. | |
Against this backdrop, at least for the time frame in question, the | |
campaign could reckon with a certain measure of tolerance from the | |
authorities. | |
## Legalisation and deportation | |
On 21 March 2016, the Coordination started a similar campaign together with | |
partner associations in Algeria, Tunisia and Mauritania, entitled | |
“Maghreb-Wide Campaign Against Racial Discrimination“, demanding the | |
introduction of anti-racist laws in all the Maghreb countries. | |
A particularity of the development in Morocco was that in late 2013, the | |
country's authorities introduced a more or less broadly-based “legalisation | |
policy“ for migrants living on Moroccan soil. The term used within the | |
official, French-language documents was régularisation, which is also used | |
in France to describe a measure by which those who have previously been | |
sans papiers, or “undocumented immigrants“, are granted residence permits. | |
In the first half of 2013, by the account of the Moroccan Association for | |
Human Rights (AMDH), a total 6,406 migrants had been deported from Morocco. | |
Even as late as 23 September 2013, an article in the daily newspaper El | |
Pais reported that the Spanish government had offered to help Moroccan | |
authorities deport “illegal“ migrants from northern Morocco – in order to | |
remove them from regions close the Spanish border. | |
What accounted for Morocco's ensuing decision to legalise migrants' | |
residency status could ultimately have been the fact that the lives of tens | |
of thousands of migrants have been centrally based in the North African | |
country for years. It is where they work, receive medical care, and send | |
their children to school. | |
In the months just after the start of the “operation“, the residencies of | |
6,000 people were legalised. In total, during the year and a half of this | |
policy, around 14,000 residency permits were issued. This predominantly | |
affected sub-Saharan Africans; however, the palace government also | |
explicitly included Europeans who were illegally residing in Morocco within | |
the measure. Coming primarily from the South of crisis-ridden Spain, in | |
recent years, not a few people had emigrated to North Morocco to try their | |
luck there. | |
## A sudden end | |
Still, from the very start, the entire policy was marked by great | |
ambivalence as well. On one hand, it brought significant relief to people | |
who often had been living, and also steadily working, in Morocco for years | |
– for example, to travellers who had become stranded long-term in the | |
Maghreb state, although the original goal of their journey may have been | |
Europe. On the other hand, from the policy's inception, the EU – which | |
generally puts substantial pressure on Morocco, aiming to move the state | |
toward its own migration policy specifications – had linked the operation | |
to its objective of barring the door against further travel or entry to | |
Europe, with the tactic of offering migrants an alternative opportunity | |
“along the way“. | |
On 9 February 2015, the Moroccan regime cancelled its prior legalisation | |
policy: directly, immediately, abruptly. Its end was announced by State | |
Secretary of the Interior Charki Draiss at a press conference. | |
Two hours later, massive raids began in the migrant camps and multiple | |
arrests occurred in the forests near the city of Nador, especially around | |
the now-famous Gourougou Mountain. Between 1,200 and 1,250 people were | |
arrested and dispersed to cities far from the border, often in the South of | |
the country. Ten days later, 450 persons were still being held in police | |
detention or deportation centres. Attempts began to deport entire groups to | |
ten different countries of origin; these attempts were not always | |
successful, since not all of the states‘ consulates spontaneously | |
“co-operated“. | |
The practice of apprehending migrants in northern Morocco – with the intent | |
to distance them from the exterior borders of the EU – and transporting | |
them to the desert in the South of the country was also reinstated. On 5 | |
November 2015, about 100 refugees in Tangier were arrested and taken to a | |
location near the southern Moroccan town of Tiznit. Similar actions had | |
been undertaken in early October. | |
After several approaches that had seemed hopeful, including the | |
“legalisation operation“ of 2013, the situation for migrants in Morocco has | |
again become visibly and drastically worse. This will not prevent the | |
European Union from treating Morocco as a leading “partner“ in the area of | |
migration control. | |
In the meantime, on 12 December 2016, Moroccan authorities announced that a | |
second “legalisation period“, similar to that of 2013-14, would supposedly | |
begin before the year's end. A communiqué from the Moroccan minister of the | |
interior, dated 12 December 2016, makes reference to the fact that in the | |
week prior, during King Mohammed VI's tour of West and East Africa | |
(including Senegal, Mali, Rwanda, Tanzania and Ethiopia), the respective | |
heads of state had apparently acclaimed his country's legalisation policy. | |
The touring visit had served predominantly to prepare for Morocco's return | |
to the African Union (AU), which Morocco had left due to the conflict over | |
the occupied Western Sahara; and also, to set in motion an expansive | |
Moroccan economic policy on the continent. Morocco's migration policy is | |
now to be elevated as a component of these new political relationships. | |
12 Dec 2016 | |
## AUTOREN | |
Bernard Schmid | |
## TAGS | |
migControl | |
Afrikanische Flüchtlinge | |
## ARTIKEL ZUM THEMA | |
Spanische Enklave Ceuta in Nordafrika: Flüchtlinge klettern über Zaun | |
Mehr als 100 Menschen überraschten Sicherheitskräfte sowohl auf | |
marokkanischer als auch auf spanischer Seite. Die Gruppe schaffte es so | |
über den Zaun nach Ceuta. |