Frontier Down the Hill

The plan was another new year resolution post all centred around Ceuta. Boy, I am glad I did not write that. The situation at the frontier has gotten bad enough to reach the media, which for once seems outraged at the carnage that appears to be an everyday occurrence for most. As per usual, I received the news from my students. As per usual, it was slammed between a laugh and a hello: "hola que tal, yo bien, dos mujeres muertas a la frontera. Frontera muy mala!" (Hey, what's up, I am good, two women died at the frontier, the frontier is real shit hey!).

It is somewhat chilling that such horrible news is treated with triviality. However, when you live your life knowing that daily stampedes might mean the end of it, I suppose that you grow unsympathetic and somewhat glad it wasn't you. There's little to blame these women for the way they conveyed the message. Media's silence, on the other hand, is a lot more problematic. Once a year Europe suddenly remembers that Ceuta and Melilla do exist; a widespread outraged and cries for development are made, and it all goes back to silence. When a friend of mine working for a national newspaper told me that yes, the news had been received but no, it probably wasn't gonna make it anywhere near the front page, I giggled. An unnatural comparison popped into my head - and by unnatural, I mean that it has all kind of reasons to be intrinsically opposed to the situation of Ceuta. Nonetheless, I could not help it but find striking similarities to the way that the media is treating Ceuta's happenings to the way the Rwandan genocide was treated. 

Yes, Ceuta maybe has a couple of dead bodies on their conscience, whilst the Rwandan genocide was the most efficient and fast killing machine in history. Yes, Ceuta's not systematically neutralising people on the base of ethnicity, colour, religion or political affiliation. However. The Rwandan genocide did not become international outrage and a revival of the "never again" cry immediately - on the contrary, many weeks had passed by before the already shared news about widespread massacres in an African country left the desks of official Dutch media. Similarly, in Ceuta, we got to the point that news is reaching foreign media; it's still being ignored. Do we need more women and children to die of asphyxiation or stamped over before Europe recognises that the issue needs to be addressed? Who knows. For now, a minute of silence and a few fliers should do; because that literally is everything non-profit associations on the territory can do. 

La Asociación Digmun denuncia y lamenta la situación de las mujeres porteadoras y concretamente la muerte de estas dos mujeres que diariamente pasaban la frontera para buscarse la vida e intentar mantener a su familia en el país vecino. #DEP#CEUTA 

Read: "The association Digmun denounces and mourns the situation of porteadoras women, and specifically [denounces] the death of two women who daily cross the frontier to earn a living and a family in a neighbouring country". As long as the situation is not known and widely denounce, statements like these are everything we can possibly do. We will keep working for these women, to empower them, to protect them, and to allow them to care for their families every day. It is bittersweet that each month I am writing about the same issue; but the information needs to be circulated, as well as a better understanding of how Europeans frontiers work. Tune in next week, for a detailed descriptions of the men and women crossing the frontier every day, making Ceuta go round and round.