The human drama in Ceuta through a photo: A police officer rescued a half-drowned baby

Juan Francisco, a police officer with the Spanish Guardia Civil, is holding a child, just three months old, almost drowned, completely pale. The photo, posted on Twitter by the Spanish police and making the rounds of the world, personifies the whole drama taking place in front of the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in North Africa. It shows that there are human dramas behind the cold numbers.

Rescuers rescued dozens of children from Mediterranean waters. Like thousands of other immigrants, they and their parents had tried to reach the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in North Africa from the Moroccan city of Phineas. With plastic boats or swimming. The photos of three rescued children that are published in the world press, give the crisis a face. The mother of this baby had jumped into the sea with it on her back to reach the mainland. The child, however, fell into the water, reports the “Guardia Civil”. The little boy was eventually rescued by the police and survived.

Among the 8,000 migrants who arrived in Ceuta within 36 hours between Monday and Tuesday were several minor children. In the meantime, the situation in the pocket has been relatively normalized. The number of people deported to Morocco has risen to about 4,800, according to a spokesman for the Spanish Interior Ministry in Ceuta. Many returned voluntarily, he said. According to this official information, the number of new arrivals is practically “almost zero”. The refugees arrived in Ceuta on Monday and Tuesday and thus actually entered EU territory. So many people had never arrived in Ceuta in such a short time. Morocco had previously eased border controls on the enclave.

Observers in Spain are convinced that the crisis was triggered by the dispute over Western Sahara, which was a Spanish colony until 1975. Morocco is claiming large parts of this sparsely populated area on the North Atlantic coast. Rabat is outraged that the leader of the Polisario independence movement, Brahim Galli, is being treated in a Spanish hospital. The relaxation of border controls was a kind of retaliation against Morocco, according to observers.

Although Morocco gained its independence from France and Spain in 1956, Spain has two more pockets in North Africa: Ceuta in the Straits of Gibraltar and Melilla, 250 km east. Both are claimed by Morocco. Near both regions, tens of thousands of Africans, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, are waiting for an opportunity to come to the EU. Usually several hundred people try to cross the border at the same time. Probably due to the coronary pandemic, there have not been many such attempts recently.