They arrive breathless and drenched, sweat intermingled with rain, defeated. They have run up Gourougou mountain in the driving rain, trying to reach safety. Some limping, all covered in mud, they arrive back at their homes under the trees after another unsuccessful attempt to climb the fence into the Spanish enclave of Melilla, in northern Morocco.
Around the city of Nador, and in the pretty pine-covered hills and lowland forests around Gourougou, several hundred African migrants are living in makeshift camps, waiting for an opportunity to enter Europe.
Stuck in Morocco, unable to move on or to return to their own countries, the migrants suffer constant harassment by Moroccan security forces and the Guardia Civil (the Spanish police force). Caught trying to scale the fence to Melilla, they face violence and possible expulsion to the Algerian border.
A dead end
Jacket distribution. MSF attends migrants in monthly mobile clinics. Regularly, we distribute hygienic material and, in winter, blankets and jackets. © Anna Surinyach
Unable to work in Morocco, this country has become a dead end for them. This is the fate of many African men and women who look to Europe – believing that it has to be better than what they have left behind, and better than what they are living through right now.
“We’d been waiting in the rain all night, next to the fence, waiting for a chance,” says Mussa. “But it wasn’t until morning that the chance came.” He shivers in the November cold. “There were more than a hundred of us.
“The soldiers got me on the head with a stone. About 20 people got their feet caught in the barbed wire on the fence. We had to leave them there, they were getting hit.” Mussa is 25 years old, from Mali. He came to Morocco a year ago. This was his second attempt to cross the fence into Melilla.
The migrants in Gourougou are all young men, mostly from West African countries, who left their homes because they had no money and no jobs. They left places where corruption is rife, and where they have mothers, brothers and sisters living in pitiful conditions who are relying on them for help.
“I haven’t been able to send anything to my mother or my three younger siblings since I got here,” says Mussa.
He calls himself Jack Bauer
Mussa says he will continue trying to scale the fence. The alternative is much worse. He and five friends scraped together the money to buy a dinghy – “the type you blow up” – and went out to sea. Two of them drowned. The sea scares him now.
Mussa has just participated in his second attempt to jump the fence into Melilla.He says he is going to keep on trying, although he’ll stay away from the sea. Two of his colleagues drowned in an attempt to cross the Strait of Gibraltar. © Anna Surinyach
Those who have been there longest have made more attempts to scale the fence, and have more scars. Some see the role of the security forces as normal.
“Everyone has his job, and the Moroccan soldier’s job is to stop us getting through. The same goes for the Guardia Civil. When they catch you – and I’m not accusing anyone, it is the will of God – well, we all know what happens; they’re soldiers.
“Afterwards, people have broken arms or legs. If you manage to get over the fence, then it’s the Guardia Civil’s turn.” He calls himself Jack Bauer, after the hero of TV series 24, and speaks with experience: he has ten attempts behind him.
“The living conditions here drive us to the fence. We sleep on the floor and eat fruit and whatever we can find – in the rubbish and from begging,” says Mussa. In the hills the migrants find places to settle, usually with people from the same country or who share a common language.
Poor living conditions
In the winter they make fires, to boil water for tea and for some heat. They sleep wrapped in plastic to protect themselves from the damp.
Abdou’s camp is a 20 minute steep climb from the road, up to where a slope forms a sort of cave. It isn’t easy for the police to reach them there, “but they do come”. Abdou arrived in Gourougou two months ago, a year after leaving Ghana.
He’s 21 and wants to reach a European country where he can finish his studies and become a teacher. “It’s my only chance,” he says. “I can’t go back to my country.”
Abdou Camp is far from the road, on top of the Mountain, as hidden as possible from the security forces. Migrants complain about ongoing raids, detentions and deportations from Nador to the border with Algeria © Anna Surinyach
Abdou’s companions go down to Nador market to beg, but he doesn’t often go with them. “I don’t like how it makes me feel inside. Sometimes they insult you, so we hunt for food in the rubbish.
“I take whatever we find up the mountain, as well as anything we buy – some rice, if we can get some dirhams together.” Abdou is afraid of the police. “I am very scared of them, and that’s why I haven’t been caught.”
Migrants targeted
Many migrants point out that they are not allowed to work in Morocco and that, if anyone does hire them, they get cheated. They are paid as little as 20 dirhams (€2) for a day’s work, “or they don’t pay us at all, and then threaten to report us to the police,” says Mussa.
The migrants are often targeted by criminals and bandits, but rarely report the crimes out of fear of the police. “Thieves come with knives and rob us – they tell us to hand over food, money, mobile phones. If you don’t do it, you get hurt,” says Abdou.
Few want to give their real name or show their face to the camera. There is palpable fear. They complain that the police harassment and raids on their camps on the mountain are becoming more routine, as are arrests and expulsions.
Abdou says that five of his companions were arrested yesterday in the market and expelled to the border area. Migrants are usually expelled in groups of 20 or 30, he says.
Once in the border region, they have little choice but to cross into Algeria. Algerian soldiers prevent them from entering by shooting into the air, so the migrants turn back to Morocco.
From the border, if you know the way, it takes four hours on foot to reach Oujda, and then about two days on foot back to Nador. Then the cycle begins all over again.
MSF in Morocco
MSF has been working in Morocco since 1997. Since 2003, MSF teams have been working with sub-Saharan migrants – a particularly vulnerable group of people with specific medical and humanitarian needs related to their living conditions and status.
MSF currently has two projects in Morocco: in Rabat, the country’s capital, teams provide medical and psychological care to migrant victims of sexual violence; and in Oujda, Oriental region, which borders Algeria and Melilla, MSF works to ensure migrants have access to medical care in public health facilities.
MSF teams also provide psychological care, distribute shelter materials, hygiene and cooking kits and carry out water and sanitation activities. In the same region, MSF teams provide primary healthcare and psychological support during monthly mobile clinics in the city of Nador.
For more information about MSF’s work in Morocco, visit our Focus Page
