LAGOS OCTOBER 6TH (NEWSRANGERS)-Spanish police, with help from the military, completed the clearance of a migrant camp in Ceuta on Monday.
The move came just over a week before the Spanish King and Queen’s planned visit to Spain’s North African exclave.
All the approximately 3,000 migrants who had been living in makeshift shelters on Trampolín Beach since the end of July have been removed from the area, the local newspaper El Faro reported.
On July 30 and 31, the government estimated that up to 80,000 migrants had arrived in Ceuta from Morocco. Most subsequently returned, but thousands still remain in the exclave.
As on the previous day, the migrants were taken by bus to the Tarajal border crossing. There, they were given the choice of either returning voluntarily to Morocco immediately or registering so that they could then be accommodated in a tent camp, according to the Spanish state broadcaster RTVE.
Many of the migrants are reluctant to register or go to the reception camps because they fear they could then be more easily deported to Morocco, which is considered a safe country of origin.
They also believe the collection of their biometric data could make it easier to identify them – even if they manage to reach the Spanish mainland or other EU countries – and to deport them to the country where they were first registered or to their home country.
RTVE further reported that, on the first day of the latest clearance operation, 600 Moroccans had therefore left Ceuta voluntarily. On the second day, many of up to 3,500 migrants, who had been living for months in huts made of plastic sheeting on the beach, fled into the surrounding woods.
The German private aid organization Mission Lifeline sharply criticized the actions of the Spanish authorities. “Under pressure and surrounded by police acting with excessive force and using armoured vehicles, there can be no question of voluntary action or due process,” Nolte Bauer, head of the Dresden-based non-governmental organization, told dpa.
Dpa
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