Stop the roundups in Morocco!

Urgent call for help

During a meeting on Sunday, Oct 28, 2007, the board of the Association Beni Znassen for culture (ABCDS) stated that, near Oujda (Morocco), countless deportations of sub-Saharan migrants to Algeria continue to take place since Dec 23, 2006. This initial action was but one episode of a series of mass deportations of immigrants. Subsequently, several roundups followed, a last one being conducted during the night of Oct 25/26, 2007, in Rabat, at the same time as the campus of Oujda University was violently attacked by police troops. Both roundups followed two months after the police has violently raided Oujda’s campus on July 27, 2007, to clear the area of sub-Saharan refugees, arresting more than 450 migrants and leaving several people seriously injured.

Also, the roundups took place just two days after Nicolas Sarkozy’s first state visit to Morocco.

As a result of continuous agitation, persecution, arrests and forcible deportations to the borders, immigrants are physically, mentally and morally exhausted and find themselves unable to bear the burden of the war that is waged against them.

More and more people come; they live under extreme weather conditions, dispersed across the whole city, especially in the border region, where hygienic conditions are miserable, and in a number of nearby villages close to Oujda.

ABCDS calls on all Moroccan, European, American, international organizations and all women and men who are willing to help, to mobilize so that ABCDS is able to sustain urgently needed help for these people. They are victims of a war against immigrants that has been declared by the European Union and that is being supported by the Moroccan government.

No matter who is politically responsible, no matter what the result of a political analysis of this situation might be – it is impossible to abandon human beings to their fate in such a moment. At least, they need to be provided with emergency supplies, food and clothes.

Contact: Hicham BARAKA, President ABCDS

Phone: 00212 - 67 71 65 24 / 00212 - 36 68 67 50

E-mail: hicham.baraka@gmail.com / abcds.asso@gmail.com