The meeting opened with an introduction by Fr. Jan Stuyt, the regional director of the Jesuit Refugee Service Europe. The purpose of this breakfast, he stated, was to bring journalists a story from the Moroccan side of the fence, just the day before a delegation MEPs leave for a visit to Ceuta and Melilla. Crucially, the MEPs will visit Spanish representatives and detention centres, but will not see the conditions of the migrants who are still outside of the EU borders.

JRS-Europe Policy Officer Renaud de Villaine gave a summary of the events at Ceuta and Melilla in October, where migrants and asylum seekers trying to enter Spanish territory in Morocco died under bullet fire from the frontier guards. Shortly after that, Spain expelled some migrants and asylum seekers who had managed to enter the enclaves in Morocco. Some of these people were abandoned by the Moroccan authorities in a desert area near the Morocco-Algeria border. M. de Villaine outlined Spanish and European Commission response, which was only focused on border protection, the details of the MEP’s upcoming visit, and Jesuit Refugee Service positions on this subject.

Fr. Josep Buades Fuster then explained to the journalists something about his experiences of following convoys of deported migrants in Morocco. Fr. Buades is a Jesuit Priest from Spain, where he is the co-ordinator of the migration work of the Jesuits. He works for the Centro de Estudios para la Integración Social y Formación de Inmigrantes in Valencia.

In October 2005, an SOS – Racismo representative in Tangiers called the Society of Jesus, the association ‘Elin’ and Women’s Link World-wide to take part in a mission to the desert where the Moroccan authorities had abandoned some people in a previous removal. Josep Buades was part of this expedition, the purpose of which was to interview migrants who had been deported, to find the bodies of the dead, and to try to stop the removals by raising public awareness of the issue in Europe. They followed and communicated with three convoys that were deporting sub-Saharan people from Morocco to Algeria and Mauritania through the desert.

He found conditions in these convoys to be very poor, and concluded that the Moroccan authorities are willing to prevent migrants from going back north whatever the consequences, even if it leads to death. Buades wanted to get across the message that in light of what he experienced and observed during this expedition, the re-admission agreement that the EU hopes to conclude with Morocco by the end of the year would lead to a flagrant violation of migrants' human rights. It also put into question the bilateral readmission agreement already existing between Spain and Morocco. As an afterthought he added that the publicity given to the bad conditions might not be unwelcome for the Moroccan authorities, as it would encourage the EU to fund measures to stop illegal migration to Europe.

Buades pointed out that among those being deported were not only irregular migrants, but also people who had an application for asylum pending in Morocco, or who were intending to lodge an asylum claim in Spain. Moreover, among the deportees there were students with a valid Moroccan permit, as well as vulnerable persons such as pregnant women and infants. These details suggest that the removals are mass expulsions without individual determination of the status of the person, and that people may be picked up for the sole reason of the colour of their skin.

Please find below the contents of the press pack given at the press breakfast

1. Briefing Notes for the Press, Intervention by Renaud de Villaine
2. 'The Treatment of Migrants in Morocco: A reflection after following deported convoys' Notes from Fr. Buades’ Intervention
3. Members of the delegation to Ceuta and Melilla, and agenda of the visit.
4. Letter to the delegation to Ceuta and Melilla from JRS-Europe, Amnesty International, ECRE, CIMADE and AEDH.
5. JRS-Europe press release about events at the enclaves, 12^th October 2005

For further details, contact

Ben Holbourn at press.europe(a)jrs.net