Several hundred migrants, abandoned in a desert area on the border with Libya after being evacuated from the Tunisian city of Sfax last week, were sheltered on Monday (July 10) in towns in southern Tunisia . But NGOs are worried about the fate of dozens of others, pushed back to the Algerian border.
“All of the 500 to 700 migrants who were on the border with Libya have been transferred elsewhere,” said AFP Salsabil Chellali, director of the office of the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Tunis.
Following clashes that cost the life of a Tunisian, dozens of migrants were driven out of Sfax, a port city in the center-east of the country that has become the main point of departure for irregular emigration to Europe. They had been taken, by the authorities according to NGOs, to inhospitable border areas of Libya and Algeria.
Exhausted and dehydrated
Those who were picked up by Tunisian authorities at the Libyan border, in the militarized buffer zone of Ras Jdir, were divided into several groups, according to NGOs and media. "A group is in Mednine, at a high school guarded by security forces," the HRW official said.
An AFP correspondent saw another contingent arrive in Ben Gardane, also housed there in a high school under the control of the security forces. in this city, and others were taken by coach to Tataouine and Gabès, according to media reports.
Beity, a Tunisian association helping women victims of violence, made an urgent appeal to other NGOs and public institutions on Monday, July 10, to "coordinate and pool resources" in order to provide emergency aid to migrants. sub-Saharans "deported to the gates of the Sahara".
For HRW's Salsabil Chellali, "it's a relief to know that they were able to leave the border area with Libya, but many other deportees near the Algerian border are risking their lives if they are not immediately rescued." . According to HRW, they would be at least 150 to 200 in this situation.
"Please help us, if you can send the Red Cross here, help us, otherwise we'll die, there's nothing here, there's no food, there's no water Mamadou, a Guinean, told AFP by phone. According to him, there are about thirty of them abandoned to their fate in a desert area near the Algerian village of Douar El Ma, close to the Tunisian border.
Accusation of "torture"
In a statement, the refugee aid organization Refugees International denounced "the violent arrests and forced expulsions of hundreds of black African migrants" in Sfax, stressing that some were "registered with the High Commissioner for Refugees or have a legal status in Tunisia".
The World Organization against Torture in Tunisia (OMCT Tunisia) announced for its part that it had seized the United Nations Committee against Torture to denounce the specific case of "VF, a migrant of sub-Saharan origin deported to the border between Tunisia and Libya on July 2" after being arrested without cause and "beaten with an iron bar in security posts" in Ben Gardane (in the east of the country).
This ill-treatment, as well as the deprivation of water and food for "more than 700 migrants" held in the buffer zone, "knowingly impos[ed] by state agents on VF and other migrants due to their racial background in order to force them to leave the territory, constitute torture”, added the OMCT.
Xenophobic speech
An increasingly openly xenophobic discourse against sub-Saharan migrants has spread since Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed condemned illegal immigration in February, presenting it as a demographic threat to his country, which is plagued by a social and economic crisis that has worsened since he assumed full powers in July 2021.
On Saturday, he denounced what he called "lies propagated on social networks", saying that migrants in Tunisia received "humane treatment in line with our values, contrary to what is said in colonial circles and among the agents who work in their service,” according to a press release from the presidency.
On Monday evening, he said in a new statement that "Tunisia has taught the world a lesson with the way it has taken care of these migrants", adding however that "it refuses to be a surrogate homeland for them and will only accept those who are in a regular situation".
