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Rabat – Spanish human rights organizations and advocates have condemned the treatment of Moroccans in detention centers for irregular immigrants, after video footage circulated online that showed them being served rotten food.
Abriendo Fronteras, a group advocating for migrants’ rights and open borders, shared pictures on their Twitter account, commenting: “Is it food thrown away by a supermarket? No, it is the food served in the CIEs (Foreign Internment Centers) in Spain.”
The footage shows detainees being served old fish meat with worms crawling through it. “This racism is shameful,” detainees can be heard saying in the video.
Criticism has been mounting against detention centers by organizations in Spain, with many slamming the country’s migration policy for failing to adequately meet humane treatment conditions.
The Republican Left of the Valencian Country, a Spanish political party, released a statement criticizing low drinking water supplies for the migrants in the detention centers, as well as the appalling quality of the food.
The statement advised that detainees should drink a minimum of 2 liters of water a day and have light healthy meals in consideration of this year’s high temperatures.
CIEs NO, a campaign involving various civil organizations and activists, said migrants in Valencia’s detainment centers began a hunger strike to protest the abysmal conditions in which they are kept.
Spanish media have recently reported that inmates are also filing complaints for physical and psychological violence experienced at the hands of police at the detention centers.
This is not the first instance that migrant detention centers in Spain have faced criticism for inhumane conditions.
In 2019, the centers were the subject of heated debate after a Moroccan detainee committed suicide in one of them. Reports later uncovered the Moroccan detainee’s many complaints about his health were ignored by the facility’s management.
