Protesters in Ceuta Spain. AP.
Thousands showed up to protest in Ceuta Spain due to ongoing concerns about the massive migrant invasion that occurred in July. AP. 72,000 migrants, mostly from Morocco, crossed the border last July and most of them returned, but at least 5000 of them stayed, though local Ceuta authorities claim higher numbers. September 2nd is a holiday in Ceuta that celebrates the founding of the city, but this year 50,000 citizens protested their government's response to the crisis. Protests were also reported in other Spanish cities on the mainland. The invasion has caused major social disruption and drained resources. Madrid has earmarked money for the city, but is blaming the crisis on Russia and Israel.
The crisis has led to a major increase in sexual assaults, with around one a day being reported to authorities since the invasion. BBC. 23 cases have been reported against adults and 9 against children. Many of the victims are female members of the invasion and the perpetrators have been both Moroccans and Europeans.
My Comment:
As bad as the situation in Ceuta is, it could have been a lot worse. Most of the invaders returned home after a few days. Had they stayed it would have been apocalyptic. Ceuta has a population of about 80,000 people and there is no way that the city could take care of 72,000 new people, many of which are hostile. They are having extreme difficulty dealing with the 5,000 to 10,000 that are left as is.
It's actually absurd that any of these people are still in Ceuta. It would be fairly trivial to deport them, just walk them over to the border, open the gates and lock it behind them once they are through. You wouldn't even need to use violence for the most part, just regular herding tactics. And riot police would probably be enough to clear out the camps in the beaches. There would, of course, be a lot of stragglers, but it would solve 90% of the problem.
But Spain's leftist government refuses to do that. Part of it would be the bad optics because the international press would find some picture of a younger underaged invader being pushed around and they would accuse everyone of fascism. The rest is that they don't actually want these people to leave. They want them to come to Spain so they can lower wages. Plus they have the old anti-colonialist prejudices where they think that people from other countries are automatically better than the folks that they are supposed to represent.
The results have been predictable. A sexual assault a day. Ironically, many of the victims are the female invaders themselves. It's not particularly surprising given the lack of policing on these beaches. But every single one of these crimes are presumably preventable (there could be a case or two of Spanish citizens attacking each other, to be fair).
Regardless, this issue isn't going away any time soon, and I think the Spanish people are right to be upset. Like I said, it wouldn't be that difficult to get these people out of there but the Spanish government is not doing so. Until that changes I expect there to be more protests.
