Disinformation about Ceuta has a serious precedent in Libya

“Traitor!”, “Go away!”, were the most cordial shouts with which the residents of Ceuta greeted the Spanish Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, upon his arrival in the exclave yesterday morning. The day before, he was due to appear before the Senate to answer questions on the migration crisis, but he chose to skip the event to go and watch the solar eclipse – along with three other ministers – from an astronomical observatory in Guadalajara, whilst Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was still on holiday, diving. Although the government in Madrid is not particularly fazed, on the other side of the sea Morocco is claiming sovereignty over the Spanish exclaves, and in Ceuta barbed-wire fences are being erected on land and at sea, whilst the border guards are preparing to deal with the threat of a potential new influx of migrants expected around mid-August.

A repeat of the events of 30 and 31 July, which saw nearly 80,000 arrivals, would lead to Ceuta’s collapse, according to local authorities. Speaking from the government building in the exclave, Grande-Marlaska reassured everyone, announcing the deployment of a further 880 police officers and emphasising the importance of cooperation with Morocco. He then issued a direct appeal to the migrants: “No one who enters Ceuta and Melilla illegally will be allowed to stay; no one will be allowed onto the mainland, nor will their status be regularised.” Barricades and barbed-wire fences aside, the real counter-offensive mounted by Spain, with the support of the EU, is the one taking place on social media, in an attempt to dissuade migrants from falling into the trap of fake news promising phantom regularisations for those who reach Ceuta by swimming.

The European Commission has taken direct action to curb disinformation campaigns, enlisting the support of Meta and TikTok. Henna Virkkunen, the Commission’s Executive Vice-President for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, said on Monday that “TikTok and Meta have activated their crisis protocols and set up an ad hoc mechanism for escalation and cooperation, including systems for fact-checking”. There is a recent precedent in North Africa – in Libya, to be precise – where a similar disinformation campaign lasting several weeks threw the migrant reception system into crisis in a manner similar to what happened in Ceuta.

Last June, several social media accounts had spread fake news regarding the alleged role of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, in the regularisation of sub-Saharan migrants. The protest by thousands of Libyans, who were shouting slogans against UN and EU officials – and also against Italy, which was accused of resettling migrants in Libya – had turned very violent, and troops from the UN mission had to intervene to defend the UNHCR headquarters in Tripoli. Some internal emails from the agency, which Il Foglio had obtained, had also revealed, in that instance, the direct involvement of Meta and TikTok in limiting the spread of fake news at the UN’s request. The incident eventually subsided, but not before causing considerable concern amongst UN staff, to the extent that the mission was on the verge of being suspended for fear that the protests might escalate further. In that instance, the scale of the event was less severe than the mass phenomenon that affected Ceuta, whilst the identity of the instigator and their motives – despite suspicions pointing to the Tripoli government – remained a mystery in that case too. 15 August will be a decisive test of the tools deployed by Europe in the war against disinformation that uses migrants as a weapon of blackmail.