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SPAIN has returned more than a dozen sub-Saharan African and Asian migrants to Morocco after they reached the Spanish enclave of Ceuta and had their asylum applications rejected, marking the first deportation of its kind from the enclave since a mass border crossing in July.

The Interior Ministry said the group had been sent back to Morocco after it agreed to receive them and that they remained on Moroccan territory. It declined to disclose their numbers or nationalities, but migrant and human rights organisations operating in Ceuta said 16 people from Senegal, Nigeria, Yemen, Cameroon and Bangladesh had been deported.

The non-governmental organisations (NGOs) claim such returns fail to take into account the risks associated with Morocco’s treatment of migrants from other countries and contradict the values espoused by Spain’s leftist government.

Virginia Alvarez, an Amnesty International researcher, described Spain’s position as hypocritical.

“Spain, despite its (progressive) speeches in Europe, is not ensuring that human rights guarantees are met for people who cross its borders in Ceuta and Melilla,” she said. “Morocco does not respect many human rights.”

Neither Morocco’s Interior Ministry nor the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which cooperates with Moroccan authorities on voluntary return programmes for third-country nationals or migrants, responded to Reuters’ requests for comment.

A spokesperson for Spain’s Interior Ministry told Reuters that Morocco was considered a safe country by the European Union (EU) and that deportations were carried out “with all the necessary safeguards”, without providing further details.

Over 48 hours in July, about 80,000 people crossed from Morocco into Ceuta, a small enclave that, along with Melilla, represents Europe’s only land borders with Africa.

While most returned within days, thousands remained, putting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government under pressure from the EU and a frustrated population to resolve the Ceuta crisis before elections on November 29.

Spanish authorities are housing 8,000 migrants in reception centres and processing asylum applications lodged by the majority of those remaining in Ceuta.

Several NGOs, including Amnesty International, have complained to the Spanish ombudsman that some of the more than 13,000 people the government says have returned to Morocco voluntarily since mid-August were forced to leave, including non-Moroccans.

— Reuters

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