Daoud* is 24 years old. Arrived from the Comoros two years ago, this shy-looking young man is studying management at a private university in Tunis. “I chose to come and study here because Tunisia has a very good reputation in my country. Today, I regret my choice”, he confides. In question, the endless administrative procedures, the harassment suffered at the police station and the general feeling of being “neglected” by their host country.
For more than a year, Daoud hoped for his permanent residence permit, a sesame for any foreign person living in Tunisia. He was first given a temporary residence permit, valid for three months – time left to the intelligence to carry out their investigation on any applicant, before a definitive right of residence can be granted to him. assigned.
“Every time my temporary card expired, I went back to the police station. My final card had still not arrived, and I was given no explanation. After a year, Daoud understood that he would never receive her, like the majority of his fellow citizens living in his neighborhood, in Bab Souika. On the advice of a friend, he then decides to move to change police station of reference. But the procedures are even more cumbersome and tedious than before.
“I’m not here to walk around, I’m here to study. Since my temporary card expired, I have been living illegally. What if the police caught me? ”
On February 6, the Association of African Students and Trainees in Tunisia (AESAT) specifically denounced arbitrary arrests, and reported “roundups […] dark-skinned foreigners,” in various districts and cities of the suburbs of Tunis, in particular Ariana. In a highly uncertain context for sub-Saharan people in Tunisia, obtaining the definitive residence permit is more than ever a question of security.
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“I was waiting for the metro to join my brother who had just arrived in Tunisia. It was then that several police officers stopped me and asked me for my papers. Everything was in order, but they violently pushed me into a van and took me to the station”, says Samuel*, a Congolese student in Tunis.
Arriving at the Ariana police station, he discovers that about fifty other nationals of sub-Saharan countries have been waiting for several hours. Samuel knows that for some time now, the police have been savagely “rounding up” black-skinned foreigners in search of illegal immigrants.
However, his papers in order are of little interest to the police. “They took our fingerprints and our saliva for DNA testing. Then they photographed us holding a sign with our names written in Arabic and French.