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“My first attempt was the day of the Ramadan feast”

The respondent is a 27-year-old male from the Ivory Coast. Before reaching Ceuta on September 1st, he tried 10 other times to overcome the fences separating Ceuta from Morocco. His first attempt was at the beginning of April 2024, on the day of the Ramadan feast, one of the most important islamic holidays. On that occasion, a group of more than 100 people managed to overcome the Moroccan barbed wire fence without great difficulty. But as soon as the group started running towards the two Spanish fences delimiting the border around Ceuta, the Moroccan police opened fire, attacking people with stones, bullets and tear gas. A lot of people got stucked between the two Spanish fences. The presence of many Guardia Civil officers in between the two Spanish fences hindered the passage of migrant people. Only a small group of around 20 people managed to climb the last fence. On that moment the Red Cross arrived and tried to negotiate with the Spanish Guardia Civil so that at least those people who had already reached the last fence could descend and remain on Spanish territory. But the Guardia Civil officers refused. They forced the small group to descend from the fence and then proceeded to return them to Morocco.
In the moment when the Moroccan police opened fire, two bullets hit the side of the respondent’s ribs and foot (see picture). The respondant told us also about what happens when migrant people are caught by the Spanish Guardia Civil and the violent treatment migrant people receive from Moroccan police: He informed us that usually, the Guardia Civil does not assault nor beat migrant people caught along the border area. They simply tie migrant people’s hands, open one of the doors along the fences and hand these people over to Moroccan police. The Guardia Civil does all this knowing that the Moroccan police does instead exercise various types of violence on migrant people (physical, psychological, lack of information…). The only thing the Guardia Civil does is that if they see the Moroccan police about to hit someone, the Guardia Civil shouts at them asking them not to do so. However, the moment the Guardia Civil is no longer looking or is not immediately nearby, the torture and humiliation carried out by the Moroccan police does not stop.

In the end, no one managed to enter Ceuta on that day. All the people involved in the collective attempt were detained by the Moroccan police, who stole them their phones, beat them and forcibly displaced them away from the border area. The respondent told us that the forced displacement of people to remote villages in the south of the country is quite systematic. At the end of the forced displacement migrant people have to be vigilant themselves to ask for their phones back to the Moroccan police. After his first failed attempt to reach Ceuta, the respondant was displaced to Agadir.

overview
Around 100 people ,
from Ivory Coast, Sudan, Guinea Conakry,
