28 March 2012
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5 October 2009
ROME - The slaughters along the borders of Fortress Europe continue. In September 2009, the victims recorded by Fortress Europe were 33, 25 of whom died in a shipwreck that occurred in the high sea off the Moroccan coast on the route towards Spain, near to the islet of Perejil on 19 September, with eight others killed by the shots fired by the Egyptian police at the border with Israel, in the Sinai [peninsula]. A border that is increasingly blood-stained. The latest victim was an Eritrean killed by the border police on 23 September, a week after two Eritreans had been shot with rifles on 16 September. On 9 September there was a veritable slughter: four African migrants killed by the shots fired by the Egyptian soldiers, who had killed another person along the same border a week earlier, on 1 September.
Some days after the Perejil shipwreck, a little more information surfaced. There were 19 men and 17 women from west Africa on board, with four babies born during the journey, in Morocco, whose age was of between one and three years. Out of 17 women, at least eight were pregnant. 16 were Nigerian, aged between 15 and 25. One of the young women was a 22-year-old Guinean (Guinea Bissau). The majority of the men were Nigerian as well, except for two Senegalese and a Guinean (Guinea Bissau). The dinghy was heading towards Cádiz. At three in the morning, the first call for help went out. Someone living in Spain received the call and warned the emergency service. When the rescue services arrived it was too late already, the dinghy had capsized at sea. Eight corpses were recovered (a 25-year-old Nigerian man and seven young women, Nigerian as well, aged between 16 and 24, four of whom were pregnant). There were 11 survivors: seven young Nigerian men and four Nigerian women. Those missing at sea were 17. The survivors were taken back to Morocco, to Tangiers harbour, from where they were expelled on the following day and accompanied back to the Algerian border, to Oujda, from where it was assumed that they had entered Morocco.
Source: Fortress Europe blog, http://www.fortresseurope.blogspot.com/
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