Morocco flaunts power to stop EU-bound migrants – EUobserver

Morocco has shown it can stop people swimming to Spanish enclaves if it wanted to, amid fears in Spain and Portugal it was abusing the crisis to extort political concessions.

Moroccan riot police, with dogs, teargas, and a helicopter, broke up a crowd of mostly sub-Saharan people on Saturday (15 August), who had gathered in a hilly area near the seaside town of Fnideq, some 3km south of the border with Spanish enclave Ceuta, according to Reuters and to Spanish news agency EFE.

Police expelled foreign journalists from EFE and Spanish broadcaster RTVE prior to its Fnideq crackdown, prompting concern over the violence that may have been used.

“The expulsion of our professionals from Castillejos [the Spanish name for Fnideq] represents a grave obstacle to press freedom and the right to information,” said RTVE president Jose Pablo Lopez in a statement.

They arrested between 100 and 300 of would-be EU migrants, according to varied reports by Moroccan media and authorities.

Morocco’s General Directorate of National Security also arrested 61 people on suspicion of human-smuggling and social-media incitement, EFE reported.

And it had stopped groups of would-be swimmers from boarding Ceuta-bound trains from the towns of Casablanca, Fez, and Kenitra ahead of the weekend.

The Fnideq crowd had gathered after social-media posts whipped up enthusiasm for a second mass-scale breach of Ceuta, on the model of 30 July, when 72,000 people tried to get over its walls or swim around them, at least 140 of whom died, and some 5,000 of whom remain there.

Morocco’s show of force came amid concerns Rabat was abusing the situation to undermine the Spanish sovereignty of Ceuta and its second, nearby, enclave of Melilla, both of which Spain annexed in the 16th century, but which Morocco claims.

Rabat has been emboldened by ever-closer ties with the US administration of Donald Trump, who wants to punish Spain for its opposition to his Iran war, and it has hired two Washington-based lobby firms, Qoris and Scribe Strategies, to curry favour there.