meanwile outside of melilla...

02.Sep.05 - In the night of sunday 28, almost 300 subsaharian migrants tried to cross the border between Morocco and Melilla (Spain). The plan was organized in the (self- organized) camp "Gurugú" that is in the forest near the border. With more than 50 handmade stairs and connected by mobile phones started the "assault" to the border. In the beginning more than 70 could cross when lots of spanish militar police (Guardia Civil)arrived and started a brutal repression. After 45 minutes of confrontation (and with the presence already of the Moroccan police) 2 migrants from Cameroon died and there are lots of injured people.

The situation is now in the first page of all spanish newspapers and the minister of interior probably will have to explain in the parlament. Yesterday took place (as we all expected) a brutal intervention in the camp again with lots of injured people and detentions.

here is a very rough translation of the communiqué posted on estrecho.indymedia.org

The morning of monday, 08.29 has been tragic. Two comrades from Camerun left with us towards the gate that separates the Mariguari Mountain, in Morocco, from the city of Melilla.

We were a number, the cops were looking for us: it's a fight, a struggle, as it uses to be. But the struggle is unfair, they have gases that asphyxiate us, they have plastic bullets. They have real bullets too, and sometimes you can hear them at night. We have our hands and our feet, and the idea not to react. What is important is the collective, and it is the hope that sustained us along the way to Europe from our origin countries. Two, three years we were on this way.

The cops have long truncheons too, falling hardly and quickly on our bodies, breaking our bones and our hope. Some of these truncheon are electrified, and you can feel your body trembling, you cannot breath anymore, and you feel that you are dying.

This day was as many other. This time there were no Moroccan cops, it was us and the Spanish guardia civil. Many of us went through the gate, we were in Melilla, the guardia civil opened the little door and sent us back to Morocco. The cops sent back the wounded, the healthy. And they sent back two dead bodies.

The night was dark, we were afraid that the Moroccan military could come and deport us to Oujda (on the border with Algeria), finishing the job of the guardia civil. So we hid in the bush. Only in the morning we found the body of one of our brothers, apparenly dead. We also saw in the light of the dawn the heads of the police close to the gate, and we realized that something terrible had happened. The Moroccan said that there was another dead body.

We were standing close to the corpse, we made a couple of phone call, asking for help, trying to make the international authorities aware of what was happening. Somebody came, filmed saw and could witness that we are saying the truth. Also Mediciens sans Frontieres saw the wounded and one of the corpses, they also know that one of the two dead had his stomach wounded. Why then all this silence?

We, the illegal as they call us, the one that have no voice, swear by our dignity (because, although they kill us we still have our dignity as human beings) that we witnessed how our comrades have been hit untill death, that the Spanish cops opened up the little door and threw the two corpses away towards Morocco as if they were dogs.

And we now that we will return to the gate. Many of us are escaping from hunger and war, but we are not afraid: although all the officials leave us alone, we know that we are human beings and that we did not do anything, that the murderers are not among us, and that at least god knows all this.

We ask all social organizations to join this call for justice.
We ask all organizations that witnessed the facts to denounce them.
We demand from the Spanish government to respect art. 157 of the immigration law.
We demand from the Spanish government the end of torture at the border in Ceuta and Melilla.

more information: more info in spanish at estrecho.indymedia.org