Date Published: 09/04/2021
ARCHIVED - Political tension after police fire rubber bullets to disperse brawlers in Tenerife migrant camp
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
Critics denounce conditions at Las Raíces and warn against turning Tenerife into a prison island
Figures published on Monday by Spain’s Ministry of the Interior underline the problems being faced due to the sharp increase in the flow of migrants from Africa to the Canary Islands, where the number of unauthorized arrivals during the first quarter of 2021 was more than double the total for the same period last year, and during the week a series of events involving the detention camp in Las Raíces, on the island of Tenerife, has highlighted the fact that tensions are still running high.
The latest arguments began on Tuesday, when eight people were arrested following an outbreak of violence at the camp which resulted in numerous people requiring medical treatment, some at the A&E unit of a local hospital. The incident was followed by a statement made in the regional parliament of the Canaries denouncing the “inhuman conditions” in which the migrants are housed at the camp, and lamenting reports that the Policía Nacional had used rubber bullets in breaking up the brawl.
The use of rubber bullets, the parliament statement says, not only places lives at risk but also further raises the level of tension in the facility, and these views have been echoed by Estrella Galán of the Spanish Refugee Aid Committee (CEAR). Sra Galán describes the police intervention as “barbaric”, adding that what happened at Las Raíces is merely the tip of the iceberg and that far more serious events are becoming more and more likely due to the policy adopted by the Spanish government in dealing with the illegal migrants.
CEAR has gone on to criticize the model of keeping migrants in camps in the Canaries rather than transporting them to mainland Spain, claiming it is “incoherent” for the national government to reject the EU’s migration policy on one hand and then apply it in the islands on the other. This policy, they say, runs the risk of converting the Canaries into “prison islands” (as some describe the Greek island of Lesbos), and using them as a deterrent to potential migrants from Africa into EU territory.
Sra Galán adds that in the recent past Spain has refused EU proposals to manage the problem of migration if they involve the creation of large detention camps, and claims that in contrast this is now exactly what the Spanish government is doing on the islands. Far more constructive, she believes, would be to transport the migrants to the mainland and to integrate them into a more stable detention system.
Speaking at the presentation of a report entitled “Migration in the Canaries, the Foreseeable Emergency”, the president of the Cabildo of Gran Canaria highlighted the fact that since late 2019 over 30,000 unauthorized migrants have reached the islands, and in response to the criticism this figure was used by Anselmo Pestana, the national government delegate to the islands, as he defended the current policy.
Of all those unsolicited arrivals, Sr Pestana says, only 4,700 still remain on the islands, indicating that they are far from becoming the “prisons” referred to by the CEAR. The delegate maintains that migrants are being transported elsewhere when the capacity of the facilities established in the Canaries is exceeded, and that further flexibility will be introduced when the Covid situation makes it feasible.
Sr Pestana also explained that the incident at the Las Raíces camp was sparked by a dispute among the interns over the queues for food, and added that normally problems of this kind come to an end as soon as the police arrive. On this occasion, though, again according to the delegate, the interns turned against the officers and additional force had to be employed.