176 Senegalese migrants who have arrived in the Canary Islands in recent months in boats or cayucos started a hunger strike in Tenerife yesterday morning to ask that they be allowed to travel to mainland Spain, since many of them have valid passports and family members who can support and accommodate them to try to get a job.
This has been explained to Europa Press by Khalifa Ibrahima Ndiaye, a young law student who arrived on the island almost three months ago, during which he has stayed in a hotel in Puerto de Cruz. "Our goal in coming here is to go and meet our relatives Spain and look for work," he said.
However, what he and many of the migrants who arrived in the archipelago have found is that they can’t travel. "Before we were told that people could travel with a passport”, he explained, “but these days they have told us that we can't travel with a passport either."
“We know that there is a health crisis because there is Covid but people can travel by taking tests, PCR or antigen tests, to verify that they do not have coronavirus. With that proof and the passport, everyone should surely be allowed to travel,” he said.
In this sense, Khalifa pointed out that there is no one “illegal” in the world and that Spain is a democratic country with freedoms in which everyone can claim their rights, something that they are trying to do through this hunger strike.
When questioned by the conditions in which they have been in the hotel during this time, he assured that they have been fed and kept indoors, but what the migrants who arrive in the Canary Islands are looking for, is to spend as short a time as possible on the islands and go to the Spanish mainland as soon as possible.
In addition, he said that the migrants who are in the hotels do not want to leave the complexes to be on the street, since they have no other place to stay and don’t want to create public disorder with so many people with no place to go, but rather they are looking, he reiterated, to leave the hotel to go to the mainland with their families and look for a job. "Our goal in coming here is not to eat and sleep every day," he added, “we want to work.”
Finally, Khalifa said both he, and the other 175 Senegalese on hunger strike, are planning to continue with the protest until someone gives them an answer and allows them to travel with a passport and a negative Covid test. However, he emphasized that the Government of Senegal should do something to protect its citizens and reach an agreement with Spain that allows them to go.
