At dawn on 23 December 2006, between two and four hundred migrants were rounded up in several neighbourhoods in Rabat (Morocco), placed in minibuses and taken by force to the Algerian border. On 25 December, round-ups also took place in Nador (in the east of the country). Little over a year after the events in Ceuta and Melilla in autumn 2005, large-scale round-ups and deportations in the name of the protection of Europe borders are again on the agenda in a country where, on a daily basis, the rights of migrants and of people in need of international protection are scorned.

Migreurop network has published a "black book" to document the situation in the two Spanish north African enclaves, which features analysis, photographs and extensive testimonies from migrants themselves, who are thus given the opportunity to describe their experiences of what EU institutions euphemistically refer to as an "integrated system to fight illegal immigration", which is repeatedly, and annoyingly, considering that migrants have been shot, abandoned to die in the desert, hunted down and detained in inhumane conditions, followed by the phrase "while respecting human rights".

Interassociative opinion published in Libération on 12 octobre 2005 and in Le Soir on 13 octobre 2005

Having been engaged in a latent war against migrants for a number of years, the European Union has now passed the point of open war at its southern border. In just a few days, more than ten people have been shot to death while attempting to cross the Moroccan border with the Spanish territories of Ceuta and Mellila. Many others have been severely injured, and hundreds have been deported and abandoned with neither food nor water in the Sahara desert. In an attempt to contain the “invasion” of (…)