Five days, with their long sleepless nights, without knowing anything about them. Families who have no news of their young people who went to Ceuta, following the call that the border to Spain was open, are flooding social networks with photographs of the missing. There is one of Mohamed Afasi, in swimwear, with a towel around his neck: he disappeared in the sea at the age of nine while trying to swim around the breakwater with his mother. There is another of the teenager Nada-AlShiba, who went missing in the early hours of the mass jump through which 72,000 people entered at once.
Read more The EU saves its weak unity against illegal immigration
Also Mariam, 15 years old, who seems, according to witnesses, to have managed to enter the autonomous city, but her phone has been off since then. And Mohamed Rihay, also a minor, who was seen near the military hospital in Ceuta after the avalanche, but his relatives cannot locate him. All their phones stopped giving signals…
It is the most silent tragedy, to which few are putting names and surnames: the missing. Local media, on both sides of the border, the most read by their neighbors, are collecting their faces, in case someone finds them. Hoping that the sea did not swallow them, that the avalanche did not sweep them away. “Any information, no matter how small, can be the reason for being, now, for their family, who is going through the most difficult moments,” plead the parents of Zakaria Al-Radwani, from the province of Ouezzane, more than three hours by car from Fnideq (Castillejos), where thousands of immigrants gathered to enter Ceuta.
The friends of Arefa Khalifa also fill posts with her photos, with different clothes, because they are not sure what she was wearing last Thursday, when she entered Spain during, according to the message, “the last campaign.” All of them are collected by the Facebook profile of El Faro de Fnideq, where analyses are interspersed asking “who told them the border was open.” In it, Abd al-Wahid recounts the case of a missing young woman who shared on her networks a news titled “Spain prohibits the return of those who swim.” That post was accompanied by a video in which it is heard that “those who enter by sea will not be returned.” And a comment that read: “the opportunity has arrived… for those who arrive, they will stay.”
The Civil Guard has set up an office that collects reports of missing persons, totaling about fifty
Some calls have worked. After publishing photographs of missing persons, many minors, the Tetuán Tube network and El Faro de Fnideq have reported that “a large number of young people” have been located.
Read more DJ Pedro Sánchez
What in Spain is on its way to becoming the center of political bickering, the guardianship of unaccompanied minors, for the families of the missing is a thread of hope. Every time they hear that the number of children and adolescents without family support registered in Ceuta is rising, the possibility that their relatives are among them also increases. Although they have not yet been able to get in touch. The Ceuta Government raised the figure to a thousand yesterday, although it believes that many still remain hidden, not going to reception centers, for fear of being expelled.
That list, which on this side of the border seems to be just numbers to distribute among autonomous communities, contains names and surnames of kids with families hoping the phone will ring.
Because many relatives cling to that: the lack of phone, that they could have lost it when they went into the sea, or that the battery ran out. In the El Tarajal Industrial Estate, where yesterday early in the morning, more than a hundred girls remained before the Ministry of Youth and Childhood announced that it would enable two schools to host them, many of the minors still wandering there first ask for a phone when someone approaches to talk to them, to get into their networks, to send a message to their families.
Every time the number of minors hosted by Ceuta rises, it is an opportunity for relatives
The Civil Guard set up a special office yesterday morning in Ceuta for collecting reports of missing migrants. A point in the customs premises of El Tarajal (Ceuta) to channel all communications from relatives or close ones in an orderly and effective manner, asking them for as much data as possible, such as a detailed physical description, medical operations, scars, tattoos, or personal objects. Police sources estimate about fifty people are missing. But these are only those who have been reported by their families.
Read more The Government will amend the rule against speculative buying due to unconstitutionality
