Anonymous victims of Spanish police

On 6 February 2014, the tragedy came across Ceuta. All media outlets reported that at least 15 migrants had drowned when trying to reach the Spanish coast from the other side of the boundary. They had first tried to cross the border by land but were repelled by both Spanish and Moroccan police, so some of them decided to swim across the border. At that point, the Spanish Civil Guard allegedly started shooting blank and rubber bullets at those people, preventing them from reaching the coast. Although some of them finally managed to reach Spanish territory, many more were unable to and died or went missing at the sea.

However, it seems that neither the Spanish nor the Moroccan police did nothing to prevent the deaths of innocent people who were only trying to get a better future in Europe. Furthermore, their actions could trigger a tragedy that ended up with at least 15 dead and some other migrants wounded due to the use of riot gear material on unarmed people who were trying to swim across the border. Even though, the first reaction by Arsenio Fernández de Mesa, the head of the Civil Guard was to deny their involvement in those events, claiming that no policeman had shot at migrants and threatening to sue anyone who dared to criticize their actions. However, video footage taken from the security cameras along the border fence shows that the police tried to repel migrants while they were in water regardless of the danger they could trigger to their safety, as the video below shows.

At these images, anyone can see the way that police started shooting on unarmed people, and even some of the rubber bullets impacted on and wounded several migrants. Therefore, they can be considered responsible for the deaths of the 15 people not only because they denied them any assistance while they were drowning, but also because the methods police used to force the migrants back into the Moroccan side of the border. In addition, other videos from the security cameras deployed along the border fence show that Spanish authorities threw even canisters near the area where the men were fighting for their lives. 

As if this was not enough, some of the policemen illegally transferred some of the migrants who managed to reach the coast back to Moroccan territory, in disregard of their physical condition.In fact, those images show how a civil guard dragging a wobbling man into the other side of the fence without providing him the healthcare he needed. Furthermore, this kind of expulsions of migrants once they had reached Spanish territory is totally against both Spanish and European laws, which provide a proceeding that police and judiciary should follow before doing so.  

Nevertheless, such crisis has not triggered any political or policial consequences. Moreover, the head of the Spanish Civil Guard initially denied any use of anti-riot materials and even threatened with filling lawsuits against all those who blamed the behaviour of the police for the deaths of 6 February in Ceuta. However, he and the political authorities had to rectify after video footages from the security cameras were leaked, but anyone has been ceased or resigned because of those incidents. It seems that they will get unpunished by Spanish authorities or justice, regardless of those who died or suffered injuries at them.

Tibet, Spain and the universal justice

Spanish parliament finally succumbed to Chinese pressure and passed a bill to curb universal jurisdiction on 11 February 2014. Ruling party Partido Popular (People's Party, in Spanish) used its absolute majority at the Spanish chamber to overthrow the law which allowed courts in Spain to prosecute crimes of genocide or human rights abuses all around the world. Thus the government led by Prime Minister Rajoy curbed a principle shared with many democracies of the world which had made possible some of the darkest episodes of world history to be pursued and their responsibles to be punished. 

Voting chart on the proposal to curb universal justice at the Spanish parliament.

The bill was passed with the refusal of the whole opposition at the parliament, regardless of ideologies. Therefore, opposed parties like the Basque separatist Amaiur and the Spanish PSOE (Spanish Workers' Socialist Party, in Spanish) agreed on rejecting the reform proposal as it would curtail independent justice and it was passed only to appease China and protect the economic ties between Spain and this country after the Spanish National Court issued an arrest warrant against former Chinese president Jiang Zemin and other CCP members on charges of genocide and torture in Tibet. Furthermore, Spanish opposition has also sued the government for trying to appease the United States by preventing the trial for the death of Spanish journalist José Couso when a tank fired on the hotel which served as a headquarters for journalists in Baghdad. The same court that is investigating possible genocide crimes in Tibet repeatedly issued an arrest warrant for several US soldiers for their alleged participation in that crimes. Nevertheless, the resolution launched by the People's Party will also difficult further investigations on this murder.
Furthermore, Spanish laws on that issue was pioneer worldwide for adding that concept to the ordinary jurisdiction, so that different judges mainly from the Spanish National Court could fill lawsuits against former Latin American dictators like Videla and Pinochet, who were even issued an arrest warrant that was never fulfilled due to international pressure. Therefore, the will to appease other states prevented some of the darkest genocides in South America from being properly investigated. In fact, the British government finally halted the extradition of Pinochet to Spain due to alleged medical reasons.
However, this was not the first attempt to curb universal jurisdiction ever. Ironically, the Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero had already passed a bill in 2009 limiting that principle in an attempt to appease the US government after a judge ordered further inquiries on the death of José Couso, as well as the scales that the so-called "CIA flights" made at Spanish territory while they were transferring prisoners to Guantanamo and the alleged tortures that some prisoners endured while being held at that military base. But the United States were not the only country to put pressure on the Spanish government at that time. In fact, Israel was worried about the investigation that another judge had engaged to find out whether the way its army repelled the Freedom Flotilla was lawful or not.
Regarding the last parlamentary resolution, it is clear that its main aim was to prevent any court move from posing a threat to the excellent relationship between the ruling parties both in China and Spain, which signed a memorandum of collaboration last year. In fact, the spokeswoman of the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated that she expected the Spanish government would do as much as it could to prevent the detention of any former key Chinese politician. Furthermore, The CCP hoped that Spain would not intervene on a strictly domestic issue, as it considers Tibet. Of course, PP is ready to accept this last point in exchange of an increasing Chinese investment in the country and the possibility to take part in the distribution of resources from Tibetan plateau. No matter the victims that Chinese occupation of the plateau since 1950 could have caused, or dozens of human rights abuses that Tibetans are enduring since then.
As a conclusion, anyone should remember the ties that the founder of the People's Party and some of its key politicians have had with the former dictatorship which ruled Spain for nearly 40 years. In fact, many of them are close relatives of some of the closest allies of Franco, starting from late Manuel Fraga himself, so the crimes of that regime are very unlikely to be pursued nearly 40 years later. Indeed, it is not strange that a country where a dictator and his allies enjoyed total impunity would try to erase any references to universal jurisdiction from its laws, regardless of victims.