argia.eus
INPRIMATU
Strasbourg accepts to expel immigrants at the border and withdraws condemnation of Spain
  • The Strasbourg Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemned the Spanish State in 2014 for expelling two immigrants on the border with Melilla on the grounds that they did not identify them and that they did not respect the law. Now, the court has reversed claiming that there are "legal forms" to access Spain and that immigrants did not use them.
Maria Ortega Zubiate @ortegazubiate 2020ko otsailaren 14a
Argazkia: RTVE

The court has withdrawn the penalty imposed on him in the 2017 judgment, which has placed the responsibility of identifying immigrants. The whistle-blowers were two young people from Mali and Côte d'Ivoire, two of the 70 arrested in 2014, who tried to pass the fence in the area. When the sanctions were imposed, it was almost unanimously recognized that the Spanish State was guilty and that it violated the Geneva Conventions and the Aliens Act of that time.

According to these laws, immigrants crossing the border have the right to be identified and cared for by a traductor.Sin but, in August 2014, some 70 people remained on the fence of Melilla for long hours and, upon descent, were transferred to the other side of the border without the right to identification or translation services.

Spain is also recovering

In 2017, Pedro Sánchez opposed the elimination at the border. At least when I was in the opposition. He has spoken on numerous occasions against these expulsions, claiming that human rights were not respected.

The People’s Party, which was then in the government, showed an absolutely opposite attitude. According to them, these expulsions were not carried out in Spanish territory, as foreigners did not control the police, so it was not yet Spain where they occurred.

However, in 2018, when Pedro Sánchez was already in the government of Spain, he went on to defend the eliminations he had rejected beforehand, with the same arguments as the previous government; foreigners did not come to police control, so they did not enter the Spanish state.

Court of Human Rights

In 2017 the condemnation of Strasbourg was strong, with the main argument that neither the law nor human rights were respected. Now it has come back s.El main argument is that there are legal ways to enter Spain and that foreigners have access to them for a long time. An example of this is the asylum offices on the border with Melilla.

Reactions have soon come, which have described the court’s judgment as “condemnable and unacceptable”. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has reported that the case is in estudio.De made, the NGO considers that the expulsion of these people without regard to their rights is illegal.