African Migrants on Hunger Strike Over EU Crackdown
Crammed into two sweltering sports halls at a university campus on the outskirts of Seville, some 450 protesters called on European Union leaders to take pity on the human rights abuses they say many immigrant workers suffer in the bloc.
"We want to send a message to the summit. They should come here and talk to the people and see how we are suffering in the real world," said, a 30-year-old Algerian and one of the organizers of the 48-hour hunger strike which began on Friday.
"We're illegal immigrants, but we, too, have human rights," he said, Reuters reported.
The migrant workers occupied the buildings at Pablo de Olavide University 12 days ago to press their demands for the right to live legally in Spain. They plan to continue the sit-in even after the hunger strike ends at midnight on Saturday.
The squalid conditions in the university buildings, with rows of unwashed men cramped side-by-side on foam mattresses, were a far cry from the luxury of Seville's gold-domed conference center where EU leaders agreed plans on Saturday to crack down on illegal immigration.
Most of the hunger strikers had arrived from the nearby coast of North Africa, from Algeria or Morocco, to seek summer jobs in the strawberry fields of southern Spain.
This year, they complained that farmers had turned to labor from former communist countries in Eastern Europe, which are looking to enter the EU when it expands in 2004.
"The government is giving visas to people from Poland and Romania, and they get contracts for their work and better conditions," a bleary-eyed said complaining. "This year has been terrible, I don't know what has happened to the people here." Alarmed by a resurgence of the far-right across Europe, leaders at the Seville summit on Saturday backed tough measures to stem illegal immigration, including joint border patrols and incentives for poor countries to cooperate in fighting it.
"It's absurd. These countries do not have the means to stop people leaving. They go because they cannot survive. What poor countries need is help to develop," said Abdullah, 45, a Moroccan who now lives in Spain and helps new arrivals.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's government, which led calls for a tough stance on immigration, has already warned it will not give special treatment to the hunger strikers' appeals for work visas. The government said the protest was the worst way of trying to win Spanish public opinion.
The university has asked police not to intervene, however.
"I hope that the situation is resolved as soon as possible," Aznar told a press conference after the Seville summit. The fact that illegal immigrants were protesting over East European workers who were in Spain legally was a "tangible sign that we need to resolve some of these issues," he said.
While some locals are helping the protesters by donating food, the protest has brought out hostility in other residents.
"They are asking for legal status here, and then they want to sit and do nothing like they do in their own countries," said Rafael Lopez, a local taxi driver. "We already have a million and a half unemployed in Spain. Besides, these people bring diseases with them, like AIDS." Several hunger strikers have already been treated by Red Cross officials for dizziness and stomach problems.
"I have been living on the streets for over a year, under bridges, in plastic tents, on the margin of Spanish society," said Rahad, 27, a trained economist from Algeria. "There are jobs, but no one will hire me because I have no visa."