On abandonment – Der Spiegel (By José Bautista, May Bulman, Klaas van Dijken, Maud Jullien, Steffen Lüdke, Andrei Popoviciu, Beatriz Ramalho da Silva, Eman El-Sherbiny and Tomas Statius):
‘The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world. Even its perimeter, characterized by barren, arid landscapes, can be dangerous. On cloudless winter nights, temperatures can drop below freezing, while on summer days, the mercury can climb well beyond 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). Now, the wasteland is increasingly used as a weapon. African governments are abandoning people like Timothy Hicks, Bella and François to send a message to migrants: Don’t even try. You’re not going to make it to Europe.
The European Union pumps billions of euros into the region. Officially, the money is for migration management: African countries have been tasked with preventing migrants from embarking on the trip across the Mediterranean – purportedly in accordance with human rights. The EU insists it has nothing to do with the practice of abandoning migrants in remote areas.’
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‘DER SPIEGEL, in cooperation with the non-profit investigative newsroom Lighthouse Reports and additional media outlets from eight different countries, set out to determine if that’s true. Reporters traveled to Tunisia, Morocco and Mauretania, the countries with which the EU works especially closely. They verified videos and shot them themselves wherever possible. They examined satellite images and confidential documents, spoke with dozens of migrants and interviewed diplomats, EU officials and police officers.
More than 50 migrants told reporters that they have been abandoned in remote areas by security personnel. Together, these stories in combination with additional reporting have produced a clear picture: These actions are far from isolated incidents. Indeed, they are systematic. In Tunisia, Morocco and Mauretania, thousands of Black people are arrested, taken to remote desert areas and abandoned.’
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‘In the capital of Rabat and in the coastal towns of Tangier, Tan-Tan and Nadar, gendarmes and members of the Auxiliary Forces are constantly on patrol. Their methods, as documented in videos, witness testimony and reports from the EU and the United Nations, are not particularly refined. The security forces hunt down people from sub-Saharan Africa. And mistakes, like the one made in the case of Timothy Hucks, cannot be excluded.
In the northern part of the country, arbitrary arrests have become normal. Every Black male knows that it is better to avoid going out onto the street during the day in some city districts, says Camara Gaamo Mafa, who works with an association that supports unaccompanied minors in Morocco. There are women and men who have been picked up dozens of times. Others disguise themselves. One man from Guinea says that he often takes along the child of a friend of his. "The police don’t stop me when I’m carrying a three-year-old,” he says.’
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‘Internally, the EU has documented the activities of security forces in Morocco. In 2019, for example, the European Commission wrote in a report about a "campaign” against "sub-Saharan refugees and asylum seekers.” Thousands, including children and pregnant women, the report noted, had been illegally detained and then taken to remote areas. A document from the EU border control agency Frontex from February 2024 also included such accusations, explicitly mentioning the use of "racial profiling.” Despite the clear evidence, however, the EU did not suspend its support for the Moroccan authorities and continues making payments to this very day. Between 2015 and 2020, Morocco received around 1.5 billion euros from the EU, with some of the money from the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa expressly earmarked for the Auxiliary Forces. The Europeans have also supplied significant amounts of equipment, paying for 70 Fiat Doblòs and 205 Toyota Landcruisers, for example. These vehicle models can be seen in several of the videos showing migrants being detained on the streets of Morocco.’
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‘Which is why Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen traveled to Nouakchott in early February. The two of them promised more than 500 million euros for the Mauritanian government, with the government tasked with "managing” migration in exchange. The fact that the European Parliament had earlier warned of "systemic and serious human rights violations," "arbitrary arrests and detention," "cases of torture," and "abusive collective expulsions to Senegal and Mali" went unmentioned.’
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‘Bella will later recognize the bus driver from photos. She says she pleaded with the guards not to send her to Mali. Jihadist groups in the country harass the populace and the Wagner Group, the mercenary militia from Russia, has even executed civilians, according to media reports. Fighting is frequent. For this reason, even orderly deportations to Mali could violate international law.
Bella says she was afraid of being raped. Without a mobile phone, she wasn’t even able to ask her relatives back home for money. Once in Gogui, she says, officials forced her and the others to get off the bus and then herded them across the border like animals. "They wanted to be sure that we went into Mali. We were in the middle of the wilderness. There was nothing there.” Then, she says, the bus drove off.’
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‘The German government, meanwhile, does not deny that deportations in the middle of the desert are taking place. In response to a parliamentary query made by Left Party lawmaker Clara Bünger in September, the government wrote it was monitoring the situation with concern. The government wrote that it has "condemned the deportation of refugees and migrants in the Libyan-Tunisian and Algerian-Tunisian border regions and called for these practices to be stopped and for information to be provided.” For the government in Berlin, the abandonments are especially sensitive since the German Federal Police has been training and equipping the Tunisian National Guard since 2015. The Germans have sent boat motors, inflatable boats, night-vision goggles and pickups – equipment worth 31 million euros.’
Read the complete article here.
Managing migration too often means abandoning, torturing or maybe even raping migrants with the help of EU, training and money, sometimes even under the eyes of policemen from EU countries.
The values of the EU, it cannot be repeated often enough, are values only for the happy few.
The electorate couldn’t care less about these criminal practices that should solve mostly imaginary problems. After all, there is Gaza, Ukraine, inflation, and yes, all these things are important.
Managing migration as euphemism for killing migrants is as history teaches us perfectly fine.
If worse comes to worse you offer sincere apologies eight decades or so after the killings.