A Tunisian association launched an appeal on Monday for the implementation of emergency aid for dozens of migrants driven out of Sfax, in the center-east of the country, towards the Libyan and Algerian borders.
Beity, an association that helps women who are victims of violence, deemed it necessary for “emergency coordination” bringing together rights defenders, NGOs and public institutions in order to “coordinate efforts and pool resources” for a “taking efficient and quality care of sub-Saharan migrants”.
“We have been witnessing for days in the region of Sfax, where there are migrants left abandoned and living under the threat of security, a real manhunt going as far as their expulsion and their deportation to the gates of the Sahara. “Wrote Beity in a statement.
Following clashes that claimed the life of a Tunisian, dozens of migrants were evacuated from Sfax, a port city that has become the main point of departure for irregular immigration to Europe, and were taken last week to inhospitable border areas with Libya and Algeria.
According to media and NGOs, 260 migrants out of at least 450 gathered in a militarized buffer zone between Tunisia and Libya, near Ras Jedir, have been transferred to other Tunisian cities, including Mednenine, Tataouine and Gabès (south) . A dozen others were hospitalized in Ben Guerdane, where an AFP correspondent saw an unknown number gathered in a high school boarding school.
“A dozen Malians who have fled Sfax in recent days, including one who broke his arm trying to escape the local population, were collected at the embassy” of Mali in Tunis, also indicated to the ‘AFP a source from the embassy.
For those sent near the Algerian border, the situation is becoming increasingly difficult, according to testimonies to AFP.
“Please help us, if you can send the Red Cross here, help us otherwise we will die, there is nothing here, there is no food, there is no water”, Mamadou, a Guinean, told AFP by telephone.
According to him, there are about thirty of them abandoned to their fate in a desert area near the Algerian village of Douar El Ma, close to the Tunisian border.
Torture charges
In a press release, the refugee aid organization Refugees International denounced “the violent arrests and forced expulsions of hundreds of black African migrants”, stressing that some were nevertheless “registered with the High Commissioner for Refugees or have legal status in Tunisia “.
The World Organization against Torture in Tunisia (OMCT) announced for its part that it had seized the UN Committee against Torture to denounce the specific case of “VF, a migrant of sub-Saharan origin deported to the border between Tunisia and Libya on July 2” after being arrested without cause and “beaten with an iron bar in security posts” in Ben Guerdane (east).
This ill-treatment as well as the deprivation of water and food for “more than 700 migrants” held in the buffer zone “knowingly imposed by State agents on VF and other migrants because of their racial origin in order to to force them to leave the territory constitute torture”, added the OMCT.
“Lies”, says the president
An increasingly openly xenophobic discourse against these migrants has spread since the Tunisian President, Kais Saied, condemned illegal immigration in February, presenting it as a demographic threat for his country, in the grip of a socio-economic crisis that has worsened since he assumed full powers in July 2021.
On Saturday, he denounced what he called “lies propagated on social networks”, saying that migrants in Tunisia received “humane treatment in line with our values, contrary to what is said in colonial circles and among agents who work in their service”, according to a press release from the presidency.
According to him, the sub-Saharan migrants present in his country “have chosen Tunisia as their destination only because a road has been paved for them by criminal networks”.
“Tunisia is not a furnished apartment for sale or rent,” he added.