28 March 2012
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Morocco/EU
Moroccan
navy accused of sinking dinghy, causing 29 to die
On the night of 28 April 2008, a chase in the high sea off the
coast of Al Hoceima ended when a Moroccan navy officer slashed
a dinghy's pneumatic body, resulting in 29 would-be sub-Saharan
migrants (including four women and four children) drowning, according
to survivors. This is the latest dramatic event in which efforts
by Moroccan security forces to stem the flow of migrants towards
Europe has resulted in deaths, after incidents including the
shooting of migrants trying to climb over the border fence in
Ceuta in the autumn of 2005.
AFVIC, the Casablanca-based association
of friends and families of illegal immigration victims, accuses
the EU of sub-contracting repression and sacrificing fundamental
human rights principles. It conducted an investigation after
the news surfaced of the incident in an article in El País
newspaper, and noted that the first obstacle was the fast-track
expulsion of survivors of the shipwreck, resulting in them only
being able to talk to a few survivors, three of them by telephone.
It reconstructed events, reporting that two dinghies (zodiacs)
had set off that night from Al Hoceima in the north-east of Morocco,
both of them carrying 60 passengers on board. At two in the morning,
one of them was intercepted by the Moroccan navy in the high
seas, ordered to halt and towed to the coast. The second dinghy
was intercepted shortly afterwards but refused to comply with
orders to stop. AFVIC notes that the "connection man",
who held the money paid by passengers, was on board and reportedly
threatened to throw the driver of the boat overboard if he stopped.
What followed is told by Eric, a 37-year-old survivor:
"The patera did not stop, we raced for a few minutes,
the royal navy followed us at the same speed, the soldiers equipped
themselves with a stick to which they had attached a sharp instrument
and intentionally pierced the pneumatic boat".
One side of the vessel deflated and it capsized, after which
an officer is reported a having said: "Now you can continue
on your way to Spain". Witnesses explain that a second navy
boat came to rescue them and threw down a rope that helped some
of them to survive, but it was too late for others. In the outbreak
of panic when they were stopped, some who tried to reach the
dinghy drowned, and a second navy boat attempted to rescue them.
The presence of a Spanish Guardia Civil boat was reported but
not confirmed.
Back in Al Hoceima, a head count indicated that there were 31 of them left. Ten bodies were recovered and 19 others had disappeared. The victims were from Mali, Nigeria, Congo, Ghana, Cameroon and the Ivory Coast. The survivors were taken to a police station, where they had their photographs and fingerprints taken, and subsequently driven in a lorry to the town of Oujda near the Algerian desert border with Morocco, at night, in spite of the traumas they had experienced. The Moroccan press reported the shipwreck, but not the alleged dynamics of events leading to the tragedy. AFVIC concludes its report by criticising the refoulements to the Moroccan-Algerian border in inhumane conditions when the survivors required support and care, calling for a public inquiry and for the punishment of people responsible, condemning European policies that it deems responsible for this tragedy and expressing its continuing support for the victims of illegal immigration and their families.
Appeals for an investigation
into this incident have been issued by European and north African
NGOs, as well as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
It appears that this incident is not isolated as, apart from
the shootings in Ceuta and Melilla, a judicial investigation
is underway into allegations by CEAR (Spanish Committee for Assistance
to Refugees) that a 29-year-old Senegalese man, Laucling Sonko,
drowned in Ceuta in September 2007 after being intercepted and
thrown into the sea by Spanish Guardia Civil officers, who had
slashed his lifejacket in spite of his pleas that he could not
swim. One of the officers subsequently jumped into the water
to save him, unsuccessfully. A report by the German refugee rights
NGO ProAsyl and the Group of Lawyers for the Rights of Refugees
and Migrants (based in Athens), published in October 2007, included
testimonies from refugees who claimed:
"The Greek coastguard forced us back into the rubber
dinghy on high seas. Before we got back on, they made small cuts
in it with knives. Every group only got one oar... It was very
difficult for us to reach the shore in a damaged boat and with
only one oar."
Others spoke of being forced to disembark on uninhabited islands
without any food or water. The report includes a section on malpractice
by the Greek coastguard in dealing with dinghies suspected of
carrying migrants; in one instance on 5 October 2007, a chase
followed the refusal by three men to comply with orders to stop,
and officers shot a man dead, who turned out to be a Greek citizen.
Sources
Communiqué de l'AFVIC, Rapport
relatif au naufrage de migrants au large des cotes d'Al Houceima
(Maroc) dans la nuit du 28 au 29 avril 2008
Statements by NGOs (from
the Migreurop website page dedicated to the incident, at http://www.migreurop.org/rubrique259.html;
http://www.migreurop.org/article1288.html
(appeal for an inquiry into the incident, English)
"The truth may be bitter, but it must be told", ProAsyl/Greek
Group of Lawyers, 29 October 2007: the situation of refugees
in the Aegean and the practices of the Greek Coast Guard:
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2007/oct/greece-proasyl-refugees-prel.pdf
(press release), http://www.statewatch.org/news/2007/oct/greece-proasyl-refugees.pdf
(full report)
AFP, 13.5.2008; El País, 17.3, 7.5.2008; BBC website,
25 April 2008, Le Monde, 8.9.2007.
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