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Rabat – While many western media scramble to appease the Western narrative, the French publication Liberation has caught onto the different Spanish portrayals of the Ceuta crisis.
When even “respectable” news organizations like the Guardian are carefully towing the editorial line, the French daily published an article emphasizing the discrepancies in Spain’s one-sided reporting. The French daily’s NewsCheck column confirmed the validity of the video showing Spanish soldiers throwing migrants back into the sea.
While the video of a Spanish coast guard saving an infant off the coast of Ceuta has gone viral, to much applause from the Spanish audience, unsurprisingly the video of the Spanish military’s use of violence against the would-be-migrants has gone unnoticed.
Several Moroccan news organizations have quoted the French daily’s reportage. Liberation notes “the attempt of the Iberian media” to “widely disseminate the [photo of the lifeguard], and to ignore this shocking video, to want to restore the image of a country dented by the migratory crisis, which wants to throw the responsibility on its closest neighbor! Grotesque!”
Read also: Ceuta: US Calls For Spanish-Moroccan Joint Collaboration to Solve Migration Crisis
Such lack of integrity reflects Spain’s interests to protect their image and their so-called “territorial integrity” on the African continent, even amidst growing concerns over potential human rights abuses and violation of international law.
Instead of engaging in an honest re-evaluation of the criminalization of EU’s borders, both the media and Spanish politicians choose to spread divisive rhetoric instead.
“It tears our hearts out to see our neighbours sending children, even babies [because] they reject a humanitarian gesture on our part,” said Spain’s Foreign Minister, Arancha Gonzalez Laya, with very little to back up her claims of Morocco’s ill-intent.
Meanwhile, Morocco’s Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita said that Morocco does not need to be “graded by Spain nor its media,” emphasizing that the North African country has stopped over 13,000 irregular migration attempts since 2017.
Moroccan security operations have also dismantled 4,163 trafficking networks and recorded 48 assault attempts in Ceuta.
“The events in the past few days have shown that 99% of the efforts in the fight are being made by Morocco against ‘nothing on the other side,’” Bourita added.
