2023-07-06 05:41:09
Scenes of great violence. Dozens of sub-Saharan migrants have been driven out of the Tunisian city of Sfax which has experienced another night of violence after the death of a resident in clashes, according to testimonies. In several districts of this large city in central-eastern Tunisia, hundreds of residents gathered in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday in the streets demanding the immediate departure of all illegal migrants, according to a correspondent on the spot.
Some blocked streets and set tires on fire to express their anger after a 41-year-old resident was stabbed to death in clashes late Monday with migrants from Cameroon, authorities said. In videos circulating on social media, police officers can be seen chasing dozens of migrants from their homes to the cheers of city residents, before loading them into police cars.
The pictures of #Sfax broadcast on social networks testify to real violence against sub-Saharan migrants, like here this group of people lying on the ground under duress. pic.twitter.com/ck1PB35Mmm
— Nissim Gasteli (@nissssim) July 4, 2023
Others showed migrants on the ground, hands on their heads, surrounded by residents with sticks waiting for the arrival of the police. On the Facebook page of the local group Sayeb Trottoir, dedicated to the issue of illegal immigration, Lazhar Neji, working in the emergency room of a hospital in Sfax, deplored “an inhuman night (…) bloody”.
Beaten and mistreated, according to NGOs
According to him, the hospital received between 30 and 40 migrants, including women and children. “Some were thrown from terraces, others attacked with swords,” he said. The Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES), which monitors migration issues, and more than 20 other Tunisian and international NGOs, said in a joint statement that security forces on Tuesday took away a “group of 100 migrant and refugee people from the Sfax region to the Libyan border.
“The group includes several nationalities including Ivorian, Cameroonian and Guinean including at least 12 children aged between six months and five years”, according to the same source. About 50 other migrants had been taken to the same region on July 2. Some of them were “beaten and mistreated”, added the NGOs, which called on the authorities to “provide clarification on these facts and intervene urgently to provide care for these people”.
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Dozens of other migrants rushed to the Sfax railway station to take trains to other Tunisian cities, noted an AFP photographer. “There is a serious problem in Sfax, there is a sub-Saharan who killed a Tunisian and suddenly the Tunisian population is angry with all the sub-Saharans and attacks them, and even the Tunisian police are trying to illegally arrest all sub-Saharans, to push them back into the Libyan desert,” said one of them, Jonathan Tchamou, a young Congolese.
“Before Tunisia was a host country for us, we lived at ease here but as now we are not welcome, the solution would be to cross the Mediterranean to go to Europe”, he continued. The death on Monday of a resident of Sfax had sparked a torrent of reactions, often with racist overtones, calling for the expulsion of African migrants from Sfax, the starting point for a large number of illegal sea crossings to Italy. .
Tensions between locals and migrants escalated after a February speech by President Kais Saied slamming illegal immigration and presenting it as a demographic threat to his country. Most of these migrants come to Tunisia to then try to reach Europe by sea, landing clandestinely on the Italian coasts. On Tuesday, Mr. Saied affirmed that Tunisia “does not accept on its territory anyone who does not respect its laws, nor to be a country of transit (to Europe) or a land of resettlement for nationals of certain countries. Africans”.
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