Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska and European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson are expected in Rabat on Friday. They will occasionally meet their Moroccan counterpart, Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit. This meeting comes two weeks after the tragedy in Nador/Melilla which left 23 migrants dead and 140 injured in the ranks of the police at the borders of the enclave.
Spanish media maintain that this meeting is part of the need to continue to strengthen collaboration with Morocco on migration issues. In a debate on Monday in the European Parliament on the events of June 24 in Nador/Melilla, Commissioner Ylva Johansson sparing the cabbage and the goat had declared that ” it is unacceptable that migrants used violence to cross the border from Melilla and that it was also unacceptable to see people die like this “.
She had considered as a priority the opening of an investigation to establish the facts surrounding the death of migrants, aligning herself with the UN and the AU.
In this regard, the UN Security Council had already met on Wednesday June 29 behind closed doors on this migratory tragedy without, however, developing a common position, according to diplomats present, indicated the French newspaper Le Figaro.
In effect, “Kenya, the non-permanent member behind the council’s convening, has drafted a statement denouncing the suffering of African migrants along the Mediterranean coast and calling on Morocco and Spain for a prompt and impartial investigation. But this text, which has aroused the reluctance in particular of the United States, has no chance of succeeding as it is, according to several diplomats. The African members of the Security Council — Ghana and Gabon in addition to Kenya — have shown no unity on the Council’s response to the tragedy in Melilla,”a diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.
To return to the meeting of the Moroccan Minister of the Interior with his counterpart Fernando Grande-Marlaska and Ylva Johansson, it comes after the June 15 meeting in Madrid between the two men and where the good bilateral relations had been put forward, as, “the excellent workcarried out jointly to deal with migratory flows or the Marhaba organization (OPE), as well as the opening of the land borders of Sebta and Melilla…
Last Monday, Grande-Marlaska, after the migratory drama, had reiterated that it regretted the death of migrants in Melilla, but had insisted on the fact “that no democratic country could consent to “violent aggression“. He also recalled that the episode experienced in Melilla and Nador on June 24 left 60 civil guards and 140 Moroccan gendarmes injured.
“Morocco has acted at all times in accordance with legal, national and international parameters, in terms of the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms, with proportionality and adaptation to the specific situation and in these terms.said Grande-Marlaska.
The tragedy motivated the opening of investigations by the public prosecutor’s office in Spain. During an interview granted on the occasion to the “Courrier de l’Atlas”, the Wali director of migration and border surveillance at the Ministry of the Interior, Khalid Zerouali, had indicated that the migration governance of Morocco is structured by a humanistic logic”, but unfortunately perverted by the criminal actions of the trafficking networks.
Khalid Zerouali, describing this sad event as “real tragedy that we deplore“, had reported very significant figures. More than 1,300 networks dismantled in the last five years (256 in 2021 and 100 until May 2022).
He also indicated that more than 145 attacks had been repelled around the enclaves of Sebta and Melilla since 2016 (50 in 2021 and 12 until May 2022), assuring that several elements of the security forces, who have always acted with professionalism and in full compliance with laws and regulations, were injured during these assaults.
Likewise, he added, more than 360,000 irregular immigration attempts have been aborted since 2017 (63,000 in 2021 and 26,000 until May 2022).
Khalid Zerouali further stated that “the countries of the North must favor a balanced prism in their approach which must not be imbued with security at all, but based on structural solutions around the sustainable development of the countries of origin and the encouragement of legal mobility between the two shores ».
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