# 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.
IMG Bild: A glove hangs from a broken barbed wireat the spanish exclave Ceuta in Morocco
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 with
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 slur),
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
DIR Bernard Schmid
## TAGS
DIR migControl
DIR Afrikanische Flüchtende
## ARTIKEL ZUM THEMA
DIR 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.