The European Commission recognized on Tuesday “a difficult situation” after the publication of a journalistic investigation according to which tens of thousands of migrants were arrested and abandoned in the middle of the desert in Morocco, Tunisia and Mauritania, with the financial support of the European Union (EU).
This investigation lasting several months was carried out by international media including The world and the Washington Post with the Lighthouse Reports collective of journalists.
It reveals how “Europe supports, finances and directly participates in clandestine operations carried out in North African countries to abandon tens of thousands of black people each year in the desert or in remote regions in order to prevent them from come to the EU.
The investigation describes a “mass movement system” that “operates on money, vehicles, equipment, intelligence and security forces provided by the EU and European countries.”
“It is a situation which is difficult, which is evolving and which we will continue to work on,” declared the spokesperson for the European Commission, Eric Mamer, questioned on the subject during a daily press briefing.
According to the investigation, refugees and migrants in Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia are “apprehended because of the color of their skin, taken on buses and driven to the middle of nowhere, often to deserted and arid areas”, without water or food.
Torture and ransoms
Some are taken to border areas where they are “sold by authorities to human traffickers and gangs who torture them for ransom”.
The EU has concluded agreements with these countries, which notably provide European funding to strengthen their capacities to curb immigration to Europe.
The European Union has also recently adopted a major reform of its asylum and migration policy, in order to tighten controls on arrivals and accelerate the return of migrants whose right to asylum has been rejected.
Lighthouse Reports indicates that it has interviewed more than 50 migrants from countries in sub-Saharan Africa or West Africa, victims of these actions in Tunisia, Morocco and Mauritania, and has “identified the systematic and racist nature of the practices”.
Sharp increase in interceptions of migrants in Tunisia
The collective of journalists cites two anonymous high-ranking European sources acknowledging that it was “impossible” to completely ascertain how European funds were used.
The European Commission has not explicitly responded to the investigation’s accusations.
“Sometimes the situation is difficult in our partner countries”, but they “remain sovereign states and control their national forces”, commented a spokesperson, Ana Pisonero.
She stressed that the EU monitored the programs for which it provided funding, and reiterated partner countries’ commitment to respecting human rights.
Tunisia – a country with which the EU concluded an agreement for 255 million euros in aid – reported having intercepted 21,545 migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to Italy from its coasts from January to April. This represents an increase of 22.5% compared to the same period the previous year.
The Tunisian President, Kais Saied, emphasizes his refusal to see his country become “a country of transit or settlement” for migrants from other African countries.
At the beginning of May, the NGO Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES) indicated that several hundred migrants from sub-Saharan Africa had been forcibly evacuated from camps set up in Tunis, then “deported to the Algerian border”.
Last July, AFP journalists interviewed exhausted migrants wandering in the desert on the border between Tunisia and Libya. They had been abandoned there by Tunisian security forces, according to their testimonies and those of Libyan border guards.