Campaign Number 9 denounces the violence that migrants (mostly from sub-Saharan African countries) face when they attempt to access Europe via the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla.
The perpetrators targeted in this campaign are not the criminal “human trafficker” or “smuggler,” the two ill-defined straw men used in political European discourse to legitimize repressive measures. Rather, it is the direct violence of Spanish and Moroccan authorities, especially the Spanish Civil Guard and the Moroccan Auxiliary Forces that are condemned in the campaign. In fact, the externalization of European borders onto the southern side of the Mediterranean (to countries such as Morocco or Libya) is often justified as being for the sake of the “victims.” But by making borders more impenetrable, it also renders them more deadly.
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