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Golfers Play On as African Migrants Scale Spanish Border Fence

Surreal scene as migrants try to cross into Spanish territory of Melilla.
Image: Golfers playing from a fairway back-dropped by African migrants
Golfers playing from a fairway back-dropped by African migrants sitting atop a border fence during an attempt to cross into the Spanish north African enclave of Melilla on October 22, 2014.JOSE PALAZON OSMA / Prodein via AFP - Getty Images

It's a photo that captures two worlds colliding. Just a few yards from the edge of a lush fairway where two women are playing a leisurely round of golf, a police officer scales a fence to try to stop a group of migrants intent on claiming asylum in the European Union.

The surreal scene was witnessed by human rights activist Jose Palazon in Melilla, a tiny Spanish territory in north Africa, on Wednesday. Tens of thousands of migrants try to force their way into Europe every year, but nowhere is this constant struggle more dramatic than the two Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta, which offer the only land route between the world's richest and poorest continents.

- David Arnott