October 15, 2002	Tuesday	Sha'aban 8, 1423

MADRID: It has become a scene which repeats itself with monotonous regularity: Spanish rescuers dragging the bodies of drowned African illegal immigrants from the sea and laying them on a beach.

Some estimates put the number of victims at more than 4,000 over five years. That’s excluding the thousands — more than 18,000 immigrants in 2001 — who arrive alive every year to the southern Spanish coast or the Canary Islands from the neighbouring African continent.

Police have sometimes arrested as many as several hundred migrants in a single weekend, and reception centres are being overwhelmed, especially on the Canary Islands.

The boats leave from the Moroccan coast. Captains working for people-smuggling gangs frequently force immigrants to jump off board 100 metres before reaching shore in order to avoid getting caught, exposing the immigrants to the danger of drowning.

In addition to shipwrecks, countless individual bodies have quietly washed ashore near the Strait of Gibraltar, where only 14 kilometres of water separate Africa from Europe.

Other immigrants try to reach Europe by hiding in vehicles travelling on ferries, an attempt which is also fraught with danger. Recently five north Africans died of gas poisoning while hiding inside a Moroccan vegetable lorry last week.

The immigrants come from countries ranging from Morocco and Algeria to Nigeria and Senegal. They include increasing numbers of pregnant women who hope to be able to stay in Spain by giving birth on Spanish soil.

More and more Asians also travel to Morocco in the hope of reaching Spain. They include people from Iraq, India, Bangladesh, China and the Middle East.

Spain is responding to the influx by sealing its frontiers as tightly as possible. A high-tech vigilance system is being put in place on the southern coast, including mobile and stationary radars, infra-red cameras and night watch equipment.

The system will eventually cover the entire southern coast from Huelva to Almeria. A similar system will be installed in the Canary Islands, with the total investment amounting to more than 140 million euros ($138 million).

Spain has also reinforced security around its north African enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla. Ceuta’s eight-kilometre frontier is now protected by a 27-million-euro three-metres-high double barbed-wired fence equipped with movement sensors, television cameras and surveillance towers.

The increased security is bringing results — but not necessarily the ones that Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar’s conservative government was hoping for.

The greater surveillance of the southern coast and Ceuta has diverted immigrant traffic to a 100 kms route leading from Western Sahara to the Canary Islands. Around 2,700 migrants were detained on the islands in the first six months of this year, compared to only 1,500 on the Mediterranean coast.

The islands are unprepared for the influx which has created humanitarian disasters. A former airport terminal on Fuerteventura island only has space for some 300 people, but more than thrice that many immigrants are crowded in the building in dismal conditions, a situation which has been denounced by human rights groups.

Spain has also tightened immigration laws and stepped up deportations. Expulsion treaties are in force with countries including Morocco and Nigeria, and citizens of the latter country are often forced onto planes and tied up so they cannot mount a revolt on board, one escorting police officer told the daily El Mundo.

Police repression against illegal immigration has prompted increasing protests from human rights groups. Yet immigrants fleeing poverty and hopelessness have only one concern: to get to Europe at any price.

Even after deportation, many attempt to return again and again. Analysts say the conclusion is clear: no amount of police crackdowns will suffice to keep them out, so other means will also have to be found.—dpa