AMDH Nador maintains Melilla death toll is 27 migrants

The Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH) faction in Nador is maintaining that the death toll from the mass irregular migration attempt to Melilla is 27 migrants, instead of the government-declared 23. 

Among the 2,000 foreign nationals who tried to cross the Nador-Melilla border fence last June 24, the NGO assured today during a press conference that “concordant sources to which we have had access conclude that there were indeed 27” fatalities that day. 

Omar Naji, member of the AMDH-Nador and responsible for the migration and asylum department stated that “the excessive use of tear gas” from both Moroccan and Spanish officials, contributed to the jostling and asphyxiation that killed the migrants. 

According to the official report on the tragic incident, most migrant deaths were attributed to “mechanical asphyxia,” while other causes of death can only be determined following the completion of autopsies. 

The NGO also condemned Moroccan authorities for the apparent change in dealing with such crossing attempts, saying, “for the first time during a border crossing attempt in Melilla, Moroccan forces surrounded the migrants, without giving them the opportunity to return to their camps, as it has always been done.”

In addition to the reconstruction of the facts surrounding June 24, the report spoke on the the hypothesis of coordinated action and the possible involvement of human trafficking networks, cited by various officials and to which the official report hinted at. 

However, the NGO believes that “irregular migration through the Melilla fence has always been a choice irregular migrants have made,” and that “the migration route has always attracted migrants who do not have the financial means to pay for a place in a convoy at sea.”

AMDH Nador additionally specified during the conference that “the majority of the migrants, who are Sudanese, South Sudanese and Chadian, were joined without any constraint by other migrants of Burkinabe, Guinean, Senegalese and other nationalities to take part in this attempt.”

“The migration by sea of sub-Saharans, which is paid and completely under the hand of networks of traffickers, appeared in Nador only since 2017, directly after the completion of construction work of the fourth barrier of Melilla with sharp blades.”

“Having become hardly impassable with increased militarization of this border, migration has turned to the sea route,” explains the NGO.

From 2017, the organization noted that “the reorientation of the migration of sub-Saharans to the sea route is controlled by networks of traffickers.”

They added that this change “was only the consequence of European and Moroccan migration policies that, by making the barrier almost impassable, have especially favored the installation of a migration market under the hand of trafficking and smuggling networks.”

The AMDH estimated that almost 100 asylum seekers were turned back on the other side of the fence of Melilla on June 24, denouncing officer violence from both Spanish and Moroccan agents.