Alert #CoûtsEtBlessures

Rabat 21.09.2018

The goal of the #CoûtsAndBlessures campaign is to do a monitoring work and to follow, as much in the field as at the Moroccan and European institutional level, the evolution of the situation since June 2018 until to the International Conference on Migration (ICD 2018) to be held in Marrakesh on December 10 and 11, 2018. As part of this campaign, GADEM will also strive to shed light on the circumstances of death of the two men, one from Mali (16 years old) and the other from Gambia, during an operation of the law forces.

Next step of the campaign: the GADEM will publish on September 25th its new report entitled “Costs and Injuries – Report on Law Enforcement Operations in Northern Morocco between July and September 2018 – Evidence and Analysis” .The “Costs and Injuries” Report e an inventory of the violent events that marked the period from July to September 2018, focusing specifically on law enforcement operations conducted on Tangier against non-Moroccan black people. The report proposes an analysis of the motivations and implications of these operations in the context of a more general context, notably in the context of Morocco’s cooperation with Spain and the European Union.

Since June 2018, operations of law enforcements are regularly carried out in northern Morocco, mainly around the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, in Tangiers, Tetouan, Nador, Oujda and around these cities. The purpose of these operations is to remove as far as possible from the border areas all black people who are not Moroccan nationals. Even if these operations are not in themselves anything new, they are distinguished from the others by the large number of arrested persons – 6,500 people listed by GADEM mainly during the month of August 2018 and on Tangier, by the violence that accompanies these operations – 2 people died during these operations including 1 minor, and arrests of a large number of minors, babies (121 identified by the GADEM including 17 babies) and pregnant women (21 according to the testimonies collected). These operations have not stopped since the finalization of the report. Yesterday, September 20, 2018, testimonies report numerous arrests of people on Tangier. They would all be gathered in the “big stadium.”

People on the spot testify of the presence of consular representatives who came to identify their nationals with a view to “a deportation trick […] it is now our government, which must decide whether to return or not “. For any information: contact@gadem-asso.org

[1] GADEM has chosen to use the term” black people not Moroccan nationals “to insist on that these arrests and forced displacements only target foreign persons on the basis of their skin color.