North Africa activists condemn Europe migration policy

NADOR, Morocco — Human rights activists from across North Africa have condemned Europe's migration policy, one year after at least 23 people died trying to cross into the Spanish enclave of Melilla.

The Maghreb Social Forum on Migration (FSMM) made their appeal after the group gathered for annual talks in Nador, a northeast Morocco town near the border with Melilla.

Around 2,000 people, many of them Sudanese, stormed the frontier on June 24 last year in a bid to reach Spanish territory across one of the European Union's two land borders with Africa.

According to Morocco at least 23 people died, the worst death toll in years of such attempted crossings.

Thousands of others have perished trying to cross by sea from North Africa to Europe, where there is increasing concern over rising irregular immigration.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) says 2,406 migrants died or disappeared in the Mediterranean in 2022, while 1,166 such cases have occurred since the start of this year.

In early June the European Union's interior ministers revised the bloc's rules, in order to share more equitably the hosting of asylum seekers and migrants. The proposal called for compulsory help between EU countries.

In a declaration received Sunday by AFP at the conclusion of the forum, the FSMM rejected "the new European pact and all policies of restriction on the right of circulation".

The forum called for a "transnational solidarity pact" with migrants and stated its refusal of "European pressure for the externalisation of European borders and massive expulsions of migrants and asylum seekers."

It also appealed for independent commissions of inquiry into migration tragedies in the region, particularly Morocco and Tunisia both of which are hubs for sub-Saharan African migrants seeking a better life in Europe.

The forum, part of the anti-globalisation movement, gathered rights activists from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, international NGOS, and African migrants' associations from Spain, France and Belgium as well as Morocco.

In the Melilla tragedy, the Moroccan government says some migrants died after falling from the fences, while others suffocated as people panicked and a stampede started.

But an Amnesty International report based on testimony from the scene said migrants were hit with tear gas, pelted with stones and beaten as well as kicked while on the ground.

The FSMM gave a death toll of 27 while Amnesty says there were at least 37 fatalities with 76 still missing.

On Saturday hundreds of protesters rallied near Melilla to denounce what they said was the authorities’ refusal to investigate the incident.