“I did not choose to be a refugee. It was not by choice that I left my country and my family, which I love, but because I have been a victim since I was just a child of a tribal war and religious discrimination that put my life in danger in Sudan “. This is how the letter to which La Vanguardia has had access begins, in which 24-year-old Bassir calls on the president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, for his international protection and to be transferred to Spain.
The story of Bassir – fictitious name to preserve his anonymity – takes on special relevance this Saturday, since today marks one year since a tragedy that should never have happened. More than 1,500 migrants, most of them from Sudan like Bassir, tried to jump the border fence that separates Morocco and Spain to “flee the war in search of a safe place, a place to live and be protected”. At least 23 people died and almost 80 are still missing today in one of the worst tragedies on Spain’s southern border.
The young man managed to get through all the fences at the Chinatown border crossing just a year ago but, once in Melilla, he was one of the 470 hot returns that day. This is what the Ombudsman concluded last October after a contrary investigation that the Ministry of the Interior always defended, that the “rejecting the border” were within the legality. He suffered – he says – undeserved violence from both the Moroccan and Spanish border guards. “I was brutally beaten, handcuffed like a criminal and threatened.”
The legal team of Demos, Estudi Legal de Drets Humans, which is handling Bassir’s case, do not hesitate to describe it directly as “illegal returns” because they have violated all the rules of the procedure. “All the people who entered that day saw their rights violated and were not given the opportunity to apply for asylum.”
Since then, Bassir has been sleeping on the streets of Morocco and confesses to the president that he lives with “fear and anxiety”. On December 13, 2022, he applied to the Spanish embassy in Rabat (Morocco) to be transferred to Spanish territory in order to later apply for international protection, under article 38 of the asylum law, for being a victim of persecution for religious and ethnic reasons in their country of origin. Six months have passed and your request has not been resolved. He trusts that, with this letter, Sánchez “will accede to my request and allow us to be transferred to apply for asylum in Spain”.
Bassir’s legal team assures that his case is paradigmatic because most people of Sudanese origin receive asylum status. “If he were in Spain, there would be a 90% probability that he would be granted it”, explain the lawyers based on statistical data by country for the last five years from the Ministry of the Interior.
Lawyers denounce the constant denial of visas to black people. “The majority have no other option, the only one left to them by the State is to jump that fence or risk it in the pasture”. This is how the young Sudanese also expresses it in his letter: “I would never have tried to jump the fence if I had another option, Mr. President, but because of my skin color I could never get a visa to arrive in any other way to a safe country”.
Refugees from Afghanistan have used the same procedure as Bassir to come to Spain, according to Foreign Affairs sources to this newspaper. “They are not black people. We see and contrast that there is differential and discriminatory treatment between different origins”, say Bassir’s lawyers. They also saw it with the temporary protection resolutions granted to the thousands of Ukrainians fleeing the war. “Is it my skin color that prevents me from receiving the same treatment as people from Ukraine and other countries?” insists the young man to Sánchez.
In May, Demos’ legal team raised the case against four UN rapporteurs and two working groups of the organization to denounce “the different human rights violated”.
Foreign sources inform La Vanguardia that it is not usual for asylum requests to be made from embassies, but from national territory. They are so few that there is no specific procedure on how to proceed, they admit. However, Bassir’s lawyers express that, even if article 38 is not precise, it does exist and is part of the asylum law 12/2009.
The Spanish ambassador to Morocco must authorize the transfer request, in consultation with other bodies, to decide whether or not to proceed with Bassir’s transfer to Spain. Exteriors has reported that they have evidence of the case, but have not specified more details.
“How can a person who has been a refugee for years and is suffering from different forms of violence be detained in a torturing environment?” ask Bassir’s lawyers. The destination of this young man, born in the South Kordofan region, was never Europe. At only 15 years old, he witnessed the murder of part of his family and almost did not live to tell about it. He decided to run away from that place and go live with his uncles, who subjected him to constant violence and persecution just because he is a Christian and they wanted to convert him to Islam. Still a minor, Bassir left his country and went through Algeria, Egypt, Libya and Morocco, countries where he continued to encounter the violence he always wanted to escape.
“I will continue to fight for my human rights and those of other refugees as far as my exhausted strength allows me, I have been looking for a safe place in the world for 10 years and the fatigue is more unbearable every day. I only ask to be treated as a human being”, concludes the letter to Pedro Sánchez.
