Migrants In Morocco Limbo As They Cling To Europe Dreams

Casablanca, Morocco, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Jan, 2023 ) :Oumar left home in Guinea five years ago in search of a better life in Europe, but today he inhabits a daily purgatory of hunger, cold and police violence in Morocco.

"Just surviving every day is a battle," said the 25-year-old.

"It's exhausting not eating enough, not sleeping under a roof, not feeling safe, experiencing racism." He spends his nights camped out on the pavement outside a Casablanca bus station, the makeshift home of hundreds of sub-Saharan Africans whose dreams of reaching Europe are on hold in Morocco.

"We get chased away early in the morning by the police. Then we wander around and come back to the same place at the end of the day," said Oumar.

Like the other migrants interviewed in this report, Oumar's name has been changed.

He has tried several times to reach Spanish territory from Morocco but has so far been unsuccessful.

Oumar sits killing time opposite the Oulad Ziane bus station with a few dozen, mostly Guinean migrants.

Some cook in a makeshift kitchen while others lie exhausted on the pavement.

Someone has hung clothes and blankets on a nearby wall to dry.

Bakary, also from Guinea, said he had been living here for three years.

"This is our sad reality but nobody wants to see it," the 18-year-old said.

The migrants set up this makeshift camp on the edge of the coastal port city of 4.2 million people because of its proximity to the bus station, a major transport hub.

Today, the down-at-heel neighbourhood sees repeated flare-ups with the authorities.

This month, six migrants were arrested following clashes during a police operation to evict people camping on the site of a tramway extension.

Today, they're back on the same site, divided into groups by country of origin with everyone pitching in to survive.

"Wherever we set up camp, they chase us away," said Boubacar, 27, from Mali. "It's not as if we want to sleep on the tram tracks, but they don't offer us any alternative."