InvestigationMore and more migrants from West Africa are trying to reach the Canaries, a Spanish archipelago located off the coast of Morocco. A journey during which some of them find themselves at the mercy of smugglers and exploiters of all kinds.
Ris-Orangis, terminus of his exile. In her big sister’s pavilion, Mariama is resting and relaxing. ” I am relieved “, she blurted out in a barely audible voice. This 35-year-old Ivorian, reserved and modest, arrived in this corner of Essonne on August 7, after a journey started more than two years ago, a one-way trip of several thousand kilometers, to burn the borders without visa or papers. With a more decisive stage than the others: the Canaries. It is there, in Las Palmas, that The world had met her for the first time, on July 22.
Located off the coast of Morocco, this Spanish archipelago in the Atlantic has become one of the maritime gateways to Europe most frequented by migrants. “The Canary Islands route is the most active on the western Euro-African border”, confirms the association Caminando Fronteras, who works to protect the rights of these migrants. The figures prove it: according to the Spanish Ministry of the Interior, 13,118 people – mostly from West Africa – disembarked there, from 1er January to September 30, aboard 340 boats. In 2019, the authorities had counted, at that date, only 6,124.
Economic distress
“The political problems of recent months between Morocco and Spain concerning [les enclaves de] Ceuta and Melilla urged people to look for another route ”, underlines Mame Cheikh Mbaye, president of the Federation of African Associations in the Canaries (FAAC). “What is happening in Africa right now is worse than war, it’s economic distress. Africans live in such suffering that they are ready to face the ocean ”, adds Soda Niasse, 42, a Senegalese which campaigns for the dignity of undocumented migrants on the archipelago.
Return to Las Palmas, in July. At the start of the evening, the city begins to yawn. In a house with crazy charm, it’s a different atmosphere: children gallop in the corridors or in the tiled courtyard; women dance, radiant as ever, for a little girl’s birthday, her first on European soil, even if Las Palmas seems far removed from Paris or Brussels. ” Happy ? Yes. It’s as if we were living in a shared flat ”, says Mariama.
This refuge belongs to the Croix-Blanche, a foundation run by Franciscan friars. The young Ivorian, a vegetable seller in her country, is accommodated there alongside twenty other women, all French-speaking. It’s been four months since she arrived in patera (“Makeshift boat”) on the island of Gran Canaria.
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