2023-07-07 19:23:41
“We were beaten (by the Tunisian security forces). We have a lot of injuries here. We have children who haven’t eaten for days, forced to drink sea water. We have a pregnant woman (Guinean) who went into labor, she died this morning. The baby died too. » This testimony, l’ONG Human Rights Watch (HRW) collected dozens of them. They come from migrants from sub-Saharan Africa violently driven out of Sfax, Tunisia’s second city (270 kilometers south of the capital), by Tunisian security forces.
Deportation to Libya
Since July 1, several hundred have been expelled from this city, the epicenter of irregular migration in the central Mediterranean, against a backdrop of strong tensions with the local population. According to HRW, the majority of them were deported to a desert area in southern Tunisia, bordering Libya. According to HRW, which claims to be based on the testimony of migrants, “several people are said to have died or been killed in the border area between July 2 and 5, some of whom were shot or beaten by the Tunisian army or the national guard”. A charge of extreme gravity.
Lauren Seibert, researcher on refugee rights within this NGO, calls on the government of Tunis to “put an end to collective expulsions and allow urgent humanitarian access” to these migrants who survive without water or food and in a very precarious situation. Tunisia is a signatory to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which prohibits collective expulsions, the United Nations and African conventions on refugees, the Convention against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and policies, which prohibit any refoulement.
“Like hordes”
Last February, President Kaïs Saïed lit the fire by claiming that his country was the subject of a vast plot aimed at “transforming the demographic composition”, in a kind of great Tunisian replacement. He then described the 20,000 sub-Saharan migrants in an irregular situation in Tunisia “ like hordes “likely to threaten” Tunisia’s Arab identity “. Several migrants from Sfax were then attacked, in particular Ivorian, Burkinabe and Senegalese workers. Last May, a man from Benin was stabbed to death by seven Tunisians.
Monday, July 3, a Tunisian citizen died during a fight with a migrant of Cameroonian nationality, according to the authorities. Immediately, violence broke out, targeting the migrants present in the city. Groups of civilians then began to patrol the streets of the city, erected barricades and burned tires to close access to their neighborhoods. Social networks are quickly flooded with images of police expelling migrants from their homes to the applause of neighbors or of migrants lying on the ground surrounded by people armed with sticks.
Refusal of the European migration pact
Following the strengthening of controls put in place on the Moroccan, Algerian and Libyan coasts, Tunisia has become the main African migratory route to the Mediterranean with a view to reaching Europe. Symbol of the pressure exerted on the country, the port of Sfax, located nearly 130 km from the Italian island of Lampedusa, at the gates of Europe, welcomes at least 10,000 migrants from the continent.
On Tuesday 4 July, President Saïed affirmed that “Tunisia will not accept on its territory anyone who does not respect the law”, adding that his country refused to become “a country of transit to Europe or a country of resettlement for citizens of certain African countries”.
On June 11, the European Commission promised the Tunisian government to inject 105 million euros into the country’s budget in exchange for a new migration pact to fight against smugglers, investment in equipment for guards coasts and the facilitation of repatriation procedures. An agreement still challenged by the Tunisian government.
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