The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has avoided assessing Morocco’s actions in the Melilla tragedy, in which 37 migrants died according to the NGOs, or correcting Pedro Sánchez’s qualification that it was a “well resolved” matter “. Instead, he wanted to put the focus back on the fact that it was a “violent attack” by an organized group of some “2,500 people” who used “dangerous means” against Spanish and Moroccan agents.
Asked by PP and EH Bildu in the control session of the Government in Congress, he has defended that Spain practices an immigration policy of “scrupulous respect for human rights” and has emphasized that this is seen in the role that Spanish agents carry out in the border and in hot spots such as the fences of Ceuta and Melilla.
Marlaska has wanted to “regret” the loss of human lives “in the terms” that have been known and has expressed his “condolences” for those deceased. He then also wanted to express his “empathy” with the wounded, 50 Spanish agents and 150 Moroccan gendarmes. However, and despite the insistence of the opposition, the minister has avoided describing or assessing the intervention carried out by the Moroccan security forces.
It is something that the PP had asked him before, which had demanded that Sánchez retract his words because the images are “shocking” and “should shake the conscience of any good person.” Thus, deputy José Antonio Bermúdez de Castro has said that the president had shown himself “lacking in humanity.”
Marlaska has only alluded then to the controversial “well resolved” expressed by Sánchez on this issue to criticize the PP for making a “partial interpretation of what he said.”
Bermúdez de Castro has also been blunt in demanding the Government that such an episode cannot happen again. “We cannot allow the tragedy to be repeated or normalized. Security has to be compatible with respect for human rights and he should be the first as minister to guarantee that this principle is fulfilled,” he said.
In the same vein, EH Bildu deputy Jon Iñarritu has insisted, albeit unsuccessfully, on extracting from Marlaska an assessment of the Moroccan action from the police point of view and has emphasized his “responsibility” in “clarifying what happened” on last Friday as well as taking measures to avoid a new tragedy on the border.
Marlaska has stressed that it is impossible to admit that the Spanish borders “are violently attacked” and has focused on the relevance of fighting against the mafias. In addition, she has assured that they are “falsehoods” that Moroccan gendarmes entered Spanish territory to repel the massive jump. For the minister at the border, the Spanish forces “scrupulously comply with the law” and act respecting human rights.
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