It was a year ago this Saturday: the tragedy in which dozens of migrants died on the Spanish-Moroccan border in Melilla, one of the European country’s North African enclave cities. Amnesty International demands that Spain and Morocco provide “justice for the victims” and that there is an “apparent cover up” of the disastrous events of June 24th, 2022, when a still-undetermined number of people died after Spanish and Moroccan border authorities reacted to an assault on the border fence in Melilla. Amnesty says 76 of the estimated 2,000 people who tried to cross are still missing and it raises the death toll to more than 100, an estimate far higher than the one officially given by the authorities: 23 dead, according to Morocco. “The Spanish and Moroccan authorities not only continue to deny any responsibility, but also prevent attempts to find the truth.
The organization argues that this entails “an obligation to investigate all the actions that took place there”, but in the past year “no official, Moroccan or Spanish, has appeared before justice for the rights violations that caused the deaths, disappearances and injuries of so many people”. Several international bodies, including the Council of Europe, have also repeatedly demanded from Spain an “independent and effective” investigation into the deaths at the Melilla fence.
