Publications
June 2024

The Nador-Melilla border trap

Research by Border Forensics, Irídia-Center for the Defense of Human Rights Moroccan Association for Human Rights ,

The Nador-Melilla border trap

 

A counter-investigation into the racist massacre of 24 June 2022

 

On 24 June 2022, some two thousand migrants attempted to cross the border fence separating the city of Nador, in the Northeast of Morocco, from the Spanish-controlled enclave of Melilla. The violent repression inflicted on them by Moroccan and Spanish law enforcement agents turned the Barrio Chino border crossing into a death trap and resulted in a mass grave. The Moroccan authorities have acknowledged 23 deaths, but according to the Moroccan Human Rights Association (AMDH) at least 27 people were killed, and more than 70 remain disappeared to this day. What happened on 24 June 2022? How and by whom was the Barrio Chino border post turned into a death trap?

To answer these questions, for more than a year Border Forensics investigated with Irídia-Center for the Defense of Human Rights and the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH), as well as other civil society actors on both sides of the border. Furthermore, we benefited from the additional advice of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR). By articulating our analysis of the massacre across different spatial and temporal scales, we attempted to understand not only the sequence of events and the practices of the actors present on 24 June 2022, but also the structural conditions that made the massacre possible, and the political conjuncture that shaped this extreme intensity of violence. We also analysed the violence that continued after 24 June, through the failure to identify the deceased and the disappeared, the impunity for the massacre, and the judicial harassment against the migrants themselves.

Although many grey areas remain, the facts that we reconstructed by cross-referencing numerous pieces of evidence are damning, for both the Moroccan and Spanish authorities, as well as for the European Union which supports them politically and financially. The authorities on both sides of the border must shed full light on this massacre and finally respond to the victims’ and their families’ demands for truth and justice.

 

 

Find the full study as a PDF here, the primary source is the following website, Border Forensics, as it contains interactive elements.