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Anger as government officials refuse to talk to Cartagena migrants about living conditions
The camp’s inhabitants were taken elsewhere for the day to be out of the way during a visit by Ministers to the migrant camp
Around 50 irregular migrants housed in the camp of the old Naval hospital in Cartagena were protesting at the door of the hospital last night, Monday June 17, demanding to speak with the Secretary of State for Migration, Pilar Cancela, and with the delegate of the Government in Murcia, Mariola Guevara, who, just two hours earlier, had left the facilities after a visit of more than an hour to see how the migrants live.
Local Police officers from Cartagena’s rapid intervention unit specialised in crowd control were brough in to prevent the migrants from going out into the street. Police sources assured that there was no violence, although there was some loud shouting.
Most of the people housed at the temporary holding centre in Cartagena’s Old Naval Hospital are migrants who made the journey from Africa without the requisite papers and visas and landed in the Canary Islands, from where they have been shipped to other parts of Spain to cope with overcrowding.
The migrants arrived by bus at the camp at around 9.30pm yesterday after an organised daytrip that took them outside the municipality. When they returned and found out that both government representatives had been at the site, they demanded to speak with them. After more than an hour and a half of talking to police officers, they were persuaded to listen to reason and withdrew their protest. Several patrol cars remained in the area to keep watch.
The Secretary of State for Migration has promised the Mayor of Cartagena, Noelia Arroyo, that the camp located in the old Naval Hospital will be “temporary” and that additional migrants from other parts of Spain will not be housed there on a permanent basis.
Image: Ayuntamiento de Cartagena
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