Report about the recent developements in Melilla

(2005)

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.

Y sabemos que volveremos a ir hacia la alambrada, muchos de nosotros
huímos del hambre y de la guerra. Pero no tenemos miedo porque aunque
todos los organismos nos dejen solos sabemos que somos seres humanos y
que no hemos hecho nada, que los asesinos no están entre nosotros, y
que
al menos dios sabe todo eso.

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.