Morocco Unleashes a Harsh Crackdown on Sub-Saharan Migrants
RABAT,
Morocco — In a widespread crackdown, sub-Saharan migrants in Morocco
are facing arbitrary arrest, banishment to remote sections of the
country and, lately, outright expulsion, analysts and rights advocates
say.
Rights advocates contend that
the raids, which government officials acknowledge, began in the summer
and were coordinated with Spain and the European Union to stem the tide of migrants to the Continent. The Moroccan government says they were aimed at only undocumented migrants and human trafficking.
The
crackdown began in June and intensified in late July, after at least
600 migrants successfully crossed to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta
in northern Morocco, rights groups say. Sub-Saharan migrants, even some
with valid residency permits, described wholesale roundups in which
they were herded onto buses with little more than the clothes they were
wearing and taken to cities hundreds of miles to the south.
Abdoulaye
N., 31, a Senegalese immigrant who, like other migrants interviewed for
this article, asked that only his given name be used for fear of
reprisals, was one of those swept up in the raids.
Four
years ago, he had settled in the city of Tetuan on the Mediterranean
Sea, where he obtained a residency card and slowly integrated into
Moroccan society. He sold cheap jewelry in the market, sent money home
to his family and generally kept a low profile.
Yet, one morning early last month, five
plainclothes police officers burst into the apartment he shared with two
other migrants and arrested them. Told the raid was part of a simple
document check, they found themselves hours later on a bus that took an
overnight trip 600 miles south to the desert city of Tiznit.
Far
from an isolated incident, their banishment is consistent with hundreds
of other accounts, human rights advocates say, leaving many
sub-Saharans living in fear of arrest and displacement, often afraid
even to stay in their homes. Gadem, a human rights group based in the
Moroccan capital of Rabat, estimates that about 6,500 migrants have been
arrested and displaced since the crackdown began.
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