Former French health minister Bernard Kouchner, a founder of Médécins sans Frontières, said on Monday that hundreds of Africans are dying of thirst and starving in the Moroccan desert after failing in their bid to reach Europe.
Kouchner told Europe-1 radio that hundreds have been ”chased” from northern Morocco near Melilla, a Spanish enclave that has been the scene of mass bids by Africans to get into Europe.
Kouchner said Morocco has abandoned at least 400 Africans caught near Melilla, leaving them stranded with ”nothing to eat”.
”It makes you sick to think that … people are dying at this moment looking for water in the desert,” Kouchner said, adding his group has seen them.
Hundreds of Africans hiding out in northern Moroccan forests have rushed Melilla in recent weeks, desperate to scale the barbed wire separating them from European soil.
Moroccan authorities have been sending the Africans who have failed to get into Melilla to a desert area bordering Algeria.
Morocco was to deport hundreds of Senegalese on Monday to their homeland.
People from destitute countries such as Cameroon, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso try to reach Melilla, one of two centuries-old Spanish enclaves that have Europe’s only land frontiers with Africa.
Africans, including Moroccans, also try to cross to southern Spain in small, ill-equipped boats that often sink — if they are not caught by the coast guard.
There are ”undoubtedly 4 000 dead at the bottom of the sea this year”, Kouchner said.
He criticised the response of the European Union to the situation as outmoded.
”To close the door does nothing. They go through the window. They break the door,” he said, adding that money and moral aid will bring a better, long-term pay-off.
”We must truly … work with them to rebalance the world.” — Sapa-AP