UN refugee officials accused of beating refugees in Morocco
I’ve discussed the problems of racism in Morocco before. This is not a new issue, but one that needs to be brought to light more fully. Please read here for the full story, excerpted here.
By Daan Bauwens | Inter Press Service
RABAT, Jun 23 (IPS) – More than 300 African refugees are gathered at the gates of the Moroccan United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), asking to be moved to another country because their rights are not respected in Morocco. Several refugees say they have been beaten up by Moroccan UN personnel.
On Tuesday morning, the refugees who are from Angola, Senegal, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia and some other countries, entered their ninth day of protest in front of the Moroccan office of the UNHCR in capital Rabat. Their numbers are steadily growing.
“We intend to stay here until our right to reinstallation is respected,” says Stéphane Gnako, spokesperson for the refugees. “We demand to be moved to a safe place where we are treated with dignity.”
According to the UN charter, every refugee has the right to be moved to another country if his or her rights are not respected in the country where they received asylum.
Many refugees in Morocco say they are caught in a trap. “Even though we are recognised by the UN as refugees, the Moroccan government does not want to grant us our rights,” Laura Thérèse from Cote d’Ivoire, who has been living in Morocco since 2004 tells IPS. “I’ve studied in this country, I have done an internship of three months, only to realise afterwards that I didn’t have the right to work.”
African refugees’ children have no right to education. “We have no right to integrate, no right to work, and no right to reinstall, so what are we supposed to do?” Laura Thérèse adds.
While I am in no way justifying the horrible treatment of sub-Saharan immigrants by the authorities in morocco I still think it has a lot more to do with the pressing demands by the EU not to have illegal immigrants coming to its shores everyday than it has to do with racism.
That may be. My guess is that the stress involved in what you mention only forces the racist attitudes held by a few people (who happen to be in positions of authority) to come to the surface.
Either way, it needs to be stopped.
You know we all have to fight racism within ourselves and within others. It’s a struggle that I have with myself every single day and I will not tolerate it in others.
It’s so easy to put people into boxes and compartmentalise by colour, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, education even religion.
The sooner we all realise that we are all one people and we all need a helping hand the sooner we can move on as an encompassing, welcoming and including civilization.
This day surely must come at some point.