Ceuta troops protest over attacks and lack of self-defence

Ceuta troops call first protest in Army history

A military vehicle stoned, four soldiers injured and a call to 112 because there was no one else to turn to. It peine in the early hours of 27 August in Ceuta, at the hands of a group of around 40 people, according to the account of the association that has called the protest. Three weeks later, the troops of the autonomous city have decided to take to the streets: on 16 September, at 20:00 in the Plaza de los Reyes, the first military rally in Ceuta in the history of the Army will be held.

It is called by the Association of Troop and Sailors (ATME), which also urges civil society and the police and Civil Guard deployed in the city to support it. The slogan is "For the defence of the professional career of soldiers!". The diagnosis conveyed by its president is that the situation is unsustainable: stonings, attempted stabbings, kicks and punches, colleagues with broken legs and dislocated elbows, and families sent to the peninsula because they can't take any more. They don't let us defend ourselves, they summarise.

One rifle for every four or six soldiers

The most concrete grievance on the table is the allocation of weapons. Nationally, each soldier receives a rifle individually; in Ceuta, patrols are organised with one rifle for every four, five or six soldiers, according to the group. All this in a city where, according to their own count, more than 20,000 people remain in an irregular situation.

Hence the term they use most frequently: powerlessness. The attacks are described as daily and in groups — stone-throwing, fights — against soldiers, police and Civil Guard officers. There are already personnel with fibula fractures and numerous traumas, and there is talk of ambushes and traps set on cliffs. The episode of 27 August, with the stoned vehicle and four injured who had to call 112, is cited as proof that the problem is not rhetorical.

Law enforcement officers without being so: they can hold, not arrest

The second demand concerns legal status. The deployed soldiers are not recognised as law enforcement officers, which in practice allows them to hold someone in the event of a crime but not to arrest. Nor have they been recognised as a risk profession, something the group describes as incomprehensible given the seriousness of what happens on the streets.

"Enough. Soldiers are completely overwhelmed, we need urgent reinforcements and firm and clear orders to carry out the work entrusted to us without being exposed and tied up in the face of attacks," is the complaint conveyed.

1,326 euros a month and eight years of rallies in Madrid

The call in Ceuta does not come out of nowhere. ATME has been taking to the streets in Madrid for more than eight years, with rallies outside the Congress of Deputies; the last one, last June, brought together more than a hundred soldiers. The reason then was pay: there was talk of "the perversos salary of soldiers: 1,326 euros".

On the legality of the 16th event, the message is blunt: "This is legal, our lawyers have said so repeatedly."

Can a soldier demonstrate? The underlying debate

This is where the uncomfortable discussion begins. Some argue that the State must be neutral and that neither soldiers nor civil servants should have the right to demonstrate, strike or join a union, regardless of how they are dressed; the argument is based on episodes in which groups of public employees used their position to exert political pressure.

On the opposite side, the response is that the problem is not permission but orders: if they are not allowed to defend themselves, it is argued, they should act according to their own judgement when the situation demands it, invoking Article 8 of the Constitution. A third, more caustic reading holds that the silence of the majority of the group has less to do with discipline than with antiestéticar of losing a fixed salary. And some recall the treatment received by air traffic controllers during the state of exception to underline that the authorities, when they want to, act quickly.

With those ingredients, it is hard to find anyone who defends that the current situation is sustainable. On 16 September, at 20:00, in the Plaza de los Reyes, the troops of Ceuta take to the streets for the first time in the history of the Army. And they do so, according to their own lawyers, within the law.