Immigrants marked with plaster
The entities Iridia and Novact, which work for the defense of human rights, have denounced serious deficiencies in the system of reception of immigrants in the Balearic Islands, as we have been able to read in a report by Marta Rodríguez Carrera in the ARA newspaper.
The so-called African route has experienced an exponential increase in the last year in the Balearic Islands, where 84% more boats are arriving than in previous years, in parallel with a decrease in the number arriving on the Iberian Peninsula. This has resulted in 23% of total arrivals to Spain concentrated on our islands, where just seven years ago this percentage was only 0.24%. This increase also means that the origin of the immigrants has shifted: many now come from Somalia, fleeing the civil war that has raged in this country in various stages since 1991. This war is estimated to have caused between 300,000 and 400,000 deaths, 1.2 million internally displaced persons, and more than half a million refugees. Between January and August of this year, a total of 1,190 Somali immigrants arrived in the Balearic Islands. These people, precisely because they come from a situation of extreme humanitarian emergency, have an asylum recognition rate of 98%.
But the conditions in which this asylum is being implemented aren't just far from adequate: they're unacceptable. We know the reception system is overwhelmed, but there are also practices that simply violate human rights. As soon as they arrive at port after being rescued from the boats, and without receiving any kind of examination or medical care, they are identified with a number written in white plaster on the skin of their arm or hand. The Irídia and Novact report highlights that the Ombudsman's Office already called fifteen years ago for an end to this practice, which is evidently offensive and, to use the report's words, violates people's moral integrity. Someone must have found it funny to make signs with white plaster on black skin, as if branding cattle. But it's not funny; it's despicable. It's repulsive. And it's obviously completely unnecessary: if it's done this way, it's because someone wants to do it to them.
The ordeal these people endure (who, let's remember, are coming off a journey in inhumane conditions, trying to flee a country mired in an even more inhumane war) continues with their transfer by van and 72-hour detention, under the guardianship of the National Police, at the Foreigner Attention Center (Centro de Atención al Estranger). We can consider the words "Centro de Atención al Extranjero," or the acronym CATE, as euphemisms for not saying "prison" or "dungeons" or "dungeons" for immigrants. In any case, it is particularly serious that this center has housed a total of 1,168 minors, who should receive special protection and should never have been allowed to enter. The nightmare continues with their transfer by boat to Barcelona or Valencia, often without any explanation about where they are going or what they should do when they arrive.
This is the reality of immigrants, not the lies explained by the far right or the right wing that is brought into power by them or is preparing for it. As for the left, solidarity and mobilization in support of Palestine are essential. But it is also essential and urgent to call for human rights in Africa, which has always been the forgotten continent, the great victim of colonialism and Western capitalism, and continues to be so. A call to prevent, also, the people who arrive as best they can to our home, fleeing one hell, from falling here into another.
