Summary of the latest news from Morocco, on Thursday 28 December, written by Lucile Dumas:

1. The authorities started to get into contact with human rights organisations in order to announce that they want to sort the "good" from the "bad" migrants, which means, identify the asylum seekers and refugees and separate them from the so-called "economic" migrants. This is commented critically in the mail - I do not translate the details.

2. The associations present in Oujda who try to support the migrants on the university campus send an emergency call: they do not have enough money to give them food and blankets, they need more people to distributes these things, and more and more migrants become sick because of the cold (they are still staying outside day and night), because of not enough food and the state of fear they are living in.

3. We are still without news about many deported people.
Let us go on with protests and mobilisations for the return of all migrants. Every person has the right to be treated with dignity and humanity.


Conni Gunsser, Refugee Council Hamburg on 25th December:

Activists in Morocco cannot rest over Christmas - since the 23 december 250 migrants and refugees were deported across the Algerian border, and efforts to get them back to Morocco started. I hope that at least the journalists and people with contacts to human rights organisations or EU MPs can try to do something. Moroccan organisations have already written protest letters.
There was a declaration of the Wali of Rabat in a moroccan tv programm. According to this, the raid seems to be an operation in the frame of "engagements of Morocco" in the frame of the Euro-African Conference which took place in Rabat in July 2006. Everything seemed "programmed" and well "organized", with even the presence of cameras and busses of the same colour belonging to the same company. It was not by accident that this operation was decided in the beginning of the Christmas holidays, which means that all responsible people and international instititutions are at home to celebrate
The first text is a summary of the situation at 6 p.m. on the 24 december: About 100 migrants (of those deported across the Algerian border) managed to reach Oujda (Morocco) again. According to what they said, there are still between 100 and 150 persones about whom we do not have information. This proves that about 250 people were arrested.
Their were thrown out of the busses yesterday eveneing at the Algerian border, in the night, persecuted by security forces who shot into the air to force them to go on to the Algerian territory. A lot of people fell down and arrived injured, more or less heaviliy, in Uijda, were a team of Médicins Sans Frontières could give them first aid.
At the moment, they could not yet eat anything an a network of organisations (mentioned below) in Oujda has found about 100 blankets and are beginning to organize a "people's kitchen". But it is rainig and it is cold in Oujda, and the migrants were arrested in the night with whatever they could put on...
In short, a dark Christmas night (not to forget that a good number of these people are christians).
These are the informations about the group who could reach the university campus of Oujda (a traditional meeting point of deported migrants who escape to Oujda).
Also five migrants are arrested in the police station of Oujda, and we do not know who and why.
Two congolese migrants were arrested by the Algerian police. They are Nsik Yulu and Muntu Dimuru.
We do not have news about other people, who probably walk around in the cold and rain without food and warm cloths between the Moroccan and Algerian border, because we do not know at which point they were left.
7 or 8 children are among the migrants arrested in Rabat. We do not have news about them.

Go on sending protest messages to the minister of interior affairs.
Fax: 037 767404

News at 9.30 p.m.: We just heard that another group of 35 people was found and more people were arrested.