2023-08-04 18:13:59
A shattering silence resounds in Europe. While people, men, women, children, abandoned in the desert between Tunisia and Libya, have been dying of thirst, hunger and heat for weeks, the European Union remains silent. However, it is with Tunisia, responsible for its renewals of sub-Saharan migrants outside its borders, that Brussels signed a “strategic partnership” in mid-July to try to stem the arrival of asylum seekers by boat.
Unliving conditions
According to the NGO Human Rights Watch, at least “1,200 sub-Saharan nationals” were “expelled” by Tunisian security forces to the borders with Libya to the east, and Algeria to the west. “Sub-Saharan migrants are taken from different points in Tunisia, then taken away and left in the desert,” says Claudia Lodesani, head of the migration program at Doctors Without Borders (MSF). Either they reach Libya, or they manage to return to Tunisia to leave by boat”. The others are likely to perish. This is the case of Matyla Dosso, and her 6-year-old daughter Marie. In the columns of Mediapart, Crépin Mbengue Nyimbilo recounts how he learned of the death of his wife and daughter, evidenced by a shocking photo of them, inert, lying on their stomachs in the desert. Crépin and Matyla had aspired to join Tunisia on July 13, to “guarantee a secure future” and an “adequate” education for their daughter, he told the news site.
The reception conditions for sub-Saharan migrants have deteriorated this year. Anti-black racism was exacerbated by the Tunisian president’s violent speech in February denouncing a “great replacement” and “highlighting the question of Arab-Muslim identity”, recalls Matthieu Tardis, researcher on migration and asylum policies and co-director of Synergies migrations. Statements that pushed sub-Saharan migrants towards boats to reach the European Union from Tunisia, now the first port of departure, ahead of Libya, according to MSF.
A fully informed pact
To stem this flow of possible asylum seekers, the European Union and Tunis concluded a “strategic partnership” in mid-July centered on the fight against irregular immigration. “It’s a partnership with a country that violates human rights,” simply recalls Tania Racho, researcher in European law and member of the Désinfox-Migrations network. It is part of a European policy on migration flows adopted for years, and in particular since 2016, with the agreement with Turkey. “The EU has a simple objective: to externalize the borders for asylum seekers”, summarizes Claudia Lodesani.
From now on, “European countries are counting on the Tunisian President, Kaïs Saïed, to help them intensify their efforts to prevent migrants from crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe. Several European governments, Italy in the lead, have made the reduction of the number of migrants from North Africa a political priority”, develops in turn Anthony Dworkin. Today, given the deaths recorded in the desert between Tunisia and Libya, but also the thousands of people drowned in the Mediterranean for lack of long-term solutions, Tania Racho is not afraid to affirm: “The European Union has blood on its hands. A way of saying that she is indeed complicit in these violations of human rights, of this right to asylum.
Agreements that “tie our hands”
This is why today Brussels does not raise its voice. If, for Tania Racho, “with this pact, we expect all the more a reaction from the European Union”, Anthony Dworkin on the contrary considers this silence as the result of the agreement. “In order to obtain the cooperation of Kaïs Saïed, these governments and the EU as a whole have muted any criticism of the measures taken against migrants in Tunisia” because it “could hinder the help they seek. It is more convenient to be silent, ”he analyzes.
However, “it is a question of fundamental credibility for the EU to criticize such actions”, he continues. But these agreements “bind our hands, our thoughts, our words”, according to Matthieu Tardis. The European Union finds itself the victim of blackmail in the face of migratory pressure exerted by these countries, as Turkey is openly doing with Syrian migrants. However, if Europe is forced to “deal with the governments in place in the region” despite their often undemocratic regime, “the commitment must not be devoid of values”, still reminds Anthony Dworkin.
A dead silence
A sign, perhaps, that this silence is also part of a migration policy essentially apprehended from a security and no longer a human point of view. For years, the migration issue has been approached as a problem rather than a solution and has given rise to fears rather than hope.
Finally, for Claudia Lodesani, the policy initiated by the European Union “has worsened to the dehumanization of people who need help to make it a problem that must be kept away from us”. This results in the criminalization of migrants themselves, but also of NGOs or people from civil society who come to their aid. “All of this policy is carried out with the aim of making the lives of migrants as difficult as possible,” complains the president of MSF Italy. However, migrants “could be a response to our demographic difficulties, we need them and we refuse them, it’s absurd”, protests Tania Racho.
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