2023-05-14 12:32:15
Their swollen bodieswrapped in seaweed and disfigured by the days adrift in the sealie at the Sfax Forensic Institute, on the east coast of Tunisia. There they accumulate, by dozens, more and more, wrapped in white cloth, in refrigerators that can no longer cope. It is the spring of 2023 and this is the most dramatic epilogue of the new battle that is being fought in the Mediterranean central between human traffickers, European governments and now, Tunisia.
the migratory route from the North African country to Italy is today the one that grows the most. He overtaking with that of Libya It has happened in recent months and is taking the number of arrivals to the European country almost to its all-time highs; so far this year, according to the Italian Ministry of the Interior, more than 45,000 migrants disembarked. And of these, some 12,000 had sailed up to March from the Tunisian coast, in impressive growth compared to the 1,300 arrivals in the same period of the previous year.
Tunisian activist Najet Zammouri, vice-president of the Ligue Tunissienne pour la Défense des Droits de l’Homme (Tunisian League for Human Rights, LTDH), sees this as the result of the economic situation in Tunisia, but also of the last movements of the tectonic plates of the international geopolitics. An explosive cocktail that is pushing more and more sub-Saharan migrants, but also Tunisians, to undertake the dangerous route.
racism and laxity
On the one hand, “the current Tunisian president (Kais Saied) has changed his policy and says that refuses to allow Tunisia be one of the guardians of migration who wants to reach Europe”, affirms Zammouri. It is “a speech, with true acceptance among Tunisianswhich possibly has as its true end negotiate more advantageous deals for the country, and which currently coincides with some laxity (at border control) from the Tunisian authorities,” he argues in an interview with EL PERIÓDICO DE CATALUNYA, from the Prensa Ibérica group, from the Tunisian capital.
This shift in Tunisian politics was evidenced in a February speech by Saied. In it, the Tunisian president asked the security forces “quickly end” irregular immigration and described the sub-Saharan population as a source of “violence and crimes” and a demographic threat to Arab-Muslim identity of his country. What has left a more far-reaching wound (despite Saied’s subsequent partial retreat) in Tunisia: the climate of hostility who is pushing the African migrants present there to the sea.
Thus, in the last months of last year and this 2023, the arrivals in Italy of people originating from west africa, underlines the Italian journalist Annalisa Pacini, specialized in immigration. “What does this tell us? That their situation has gotten much worse in Tunisiahas been a racist campaign against them, based on the same theories, such as that of the ethnic replacementwhich have been circulating for years in Europe”, he opines. “Everything coincides, moreover, with the growing authoritarianism of Saied, a leader who has even stripped Parliament of its powers,” says Pacini, suggesting that the president also uses these arguments to avoid the economic crisis affecting the country.
Dodge the economy
An economic crisis that is being terrible in Tunisia, with all the indicators that are currently showing red: a inflation two figures, a debt that exceeds 100% of GDP and 42% of young people unemployed. Although above all the state coffers are empty, exports are languishing and the turismopreviously a great source of income for the country, has never recovered after the attack on the Bardo Museum (2015). Which is also a clue in the presence of Tunisians on the list of top 10 nationalities of migrants disembarked in Italy.
“This is the fruit of increasingly restrictive policies of the European Union to enter Europe, which means that even families, children, university students take risks with this route”, says the activist Zammouri, arguing that a softening of these policies would represent a step to solve this crisis. All this because Furthermore, “the danger of instability and violence in Libya is another of the causes of the increase in the Tunisian route”, agrees Jean Jacques Diku, representative of the Congolese community in Italy.
“Traffickers use the easiest routes“, insists on the presence of these criminal gangs that, according to some, has also been increasing in Tunisia. Which reveals another problem: the possibility that the Tunisian government does not have the capacity to stop these networks. “And this destroys the proposal that an agreement similar to the one signed by the European Union with Turkey (in 2015) be put into operation in Tunisia,” says Zammouri, referring to the aired (although not specified) plan proposed by the Government of Giorgia Meloni to stop arrivals. What entangles even more the solution of a phenomenon that is believed that, with good weather, will grow in the coming months.
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