Chaos as migrants moved off beaches in Ceuta

Ankur Desai (0:00)

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Uncle Desai, and at 13 Hours GMT on Friday the 18th of September, these are our main stories. There's been chaotic scenes in Spain's North African territory, so as police began moving hundreds of migrants from the beaches to a tent city in the port area, 70,000 mostly Moroccans flooded across the border in a sudden surge in late July. South Korea has rolled out sending any troops to Iran, despite coming under pressure from President Trump in recent weeks. A car bomb attack on a mosque in Pakistan's northwest has left at least 16 people dead, including five policemen. Also in this podcast, as Russia goes to the polls in the first parliamentary election since the beginning of the war with Ukraine, do people think it will make a difference?

SPEAKER_2 (0:48)

To be fair, I don't think it will change in particular. I think it would be pretty much the same.

SPEAKER_3 (0:51)

I think a lot of people in our country want change. We haven't voices.

SPEAKER_2 (0:56)

We haven't voices.

Ankur Desai (0:59)

First to the Spanish territory of Ceuta in North Africa.

Police firing shots in the air as they struggle to contain crowds of people. The authorities have been moving hundreds of migrants from beaches to the port area, where tents have been set up.

Tens of thousands of migrants crossed from neighboring Morocco to Ceuta in late July. At least 100 people died during the crossing. Though most migrants returned, several thousand remain in the territory. Many of them have been sleeping on beaches. A Global Affairs reporter, Sebastian Usher, told me more.

Sebastian Usher (1:42)

This was one of the first big operations to try to move the migrants who have taken residence, if you can call it that, on the beaches in Ceuta, around 3,000.

So that started early in the morning. Now, there was a pretty tight route towards the port area, where tents have been set up. But there aren't enough tents for the number of people who are on the beaches, which is not the whole amount of migrants in any case, but are still in Ceuta. So I think that's why there was a lot of pushing and jostling and rush. At the start, people wanted to ensure that they could get one of those places. Also, miners, and there's a lot of younger men who are there, would be put somewhere else. So I think they wanted to ensure that they could stay with whoever they had either gone with or struck a relationship with since. So as you heard, shots were fired, rubber bullets were fired in the air, police backed up by the Spanish military, used batons at a certain point, was brought under control. So this operation has been finished for now, but it's only a partial effort to try and solve the crisis that continues.

Ankur Desai (2:45)

How do people serve in the territory in Ceuta feel about what's happening? What's their view on what's been happening?

Sebastian Usher (2:51)

Not happy at all, you can imagine. I mean, originally, the more than 70,000 people who crossed, that was a huge issue. It has happened before, but not to that extent.

And the fact that there are still, we don't know the numbers, but maybe up to 10,000, maybe a bit more of migrants still there sleeping rough.

Often in very difficult conditions, there have been protests by people in Ceuta against this, demanding that they are sent back to Morocco, where most of them came from. But the Spanish government does more. This is partly a response to that, that this is being done. But I say it's a temporary south. There are also some local initiatives to try to help people. I mean, as you say, these are vulnerable young people, many of them teenagers. So there's a sense that they are in a very difficult situation. So there are some local groups who've been trying to give them food and some aid as well.

Ankur Desai (3:40)

Just very, very briefly, the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, the impact on him and the chaotic transfer that we've seen.

Sebastian Usher (3:46)

Huge. I mean, this won't help that.

He's had a real big political crisis over this. He was seen both in Spain and in Europe as being too lenient over the whole migration issue. So there's been big pushback from this. His ratings have fallen. He gets a lot of flak from the right-wing opposition, but from other elements within Spain as well. As I say, these scenes, what's happened today, won't be seen as really doing anything about that.

Ankur Desai (4:11)