The Diplomat
Some 2,500 immigrants of sub-Saharan origin yesterday staged the largest jump in history to the Melilla fence, with the intention of entering Spanish territory. Only 491 succeeded.
According to the Government Delegation in the autonomous city, the jump took place at around half past nine in the morning, and the immigrants, who “were equipped with hooks, sticks and screws in their shoes” to make their climb easier, used “great violence“, throwing stones to overtake the Moroccan security forces who were trying to prevent them from reaching the fence.
The Guardia Civil’s large-scale operation, which counted on the collaboration of the National Police, largely neutralised the operation, but, as a result of the jump, some twenty immigrants and a similar number of agents of the Spanish Security Forces were slightly injured.
The sub-Saharans are now in the facilities of the Centre for the Temporary Stay of Immigrants (CETI), which before today’s jump over the fence registered the lowest occupancy in recent months, with only half a hundred people being accommodated, when its maximum capacity reaches a thousand.
The last big jump of the Melilla fence took place last October, when some 700 immigrants attempted to cross the border, although none managed to reach the separation fence with Morocco. In May 2021, some 600 migrants tried to enter in three attempts to jump the fence at different points along the border perimeter.
Until today’s attempt, the biggest jumps to the fence in Melilla had taken place in 2014. On 18 March of that year, 492 migrants managed to enter out of around 1,100 who took part in the attempt.
The following 28 May, another 500 immigrants jumped the fence, in a new attempt involving a thousand sub-Saharan Africans.
What happened in Melilla yesterday led the president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, to call on the government to deploy the armed forces on the border of Ceuta and Melilla and to accuse Morocco of what he described as an “attack”.
“Morocco has thrown thousands of men against our border in Melilla. The army must be deployed as soon as possible,” he said on his Twitter account. He also stated that the Spanish border is “under permanent attack” and pointed out that neither the PSOE and United Podemos government nor the Popular Party “want to face up to the obvious”.
Yesterday, in the plenary session of the Congress of Deputies, he distinguished Ukrainian asylum seekers, whom he considers war refugees, from those other young people “of Muslim origin” and “of military age” who “throw themselves” at the borders of Europe. “It is not discrimination, we distinguish who are refugees and who are not. Those fleeing war should be welcomed and not the waves of men sent in a premeditated way to destabilise nations and storm borders”, he said, while referring to King Mohammed VI of Morocco as “a satrap, who has once again perceived the weakness of our government and our institutions, just like Putin”.
