TUNISIA: Migrants in the Tunisian city of Sfax, aiming to make Europe their new home, now share the burden and blame for escalating racially-tinged tensions, amid fears of European leaders trying to stem the numbers of people arriving on their shores.
The animosity that has exploded in recent weeks in Sfax between Tunisians and black migrants from sub-Saharan Africa is widely seen as a turning point in how the North African country deals with migration.
European leaders are offering Tunisia millions amid abuses, and activists fear an immigration summit in Rome on Sunday will seek to pursue an anti-immigrant vision that places the onus on Africa to keep Africans out of Europe.
Hundreds of migrants drowned at sea trying to reach Italy in flimsy boats, but migrants are now waiting for their chance to cross the Mediterranean in fear, some of them beaten or transported by the authorities to new destinations, others thrown into the desert.
Musa Khaled, from Congo, was among a group of migrants expelled from Tunisia who were found by Libyan border guards gathered in a barren landscape last weekend. He said Tunisian officials took their belongings and money before taking them from the Tunisian port city of Sfax and disembarking them without food or water.
“When we tried to enter Tunisia again, they beat us badly. They broke my hand and hit my head,” he told the Associated Press near the Al-Asa border point in Libya, holding a piece of cloth to his wrist. “We are in the desert now for several days. Sir, please.”
Human rights activists from North Africa, West Africa and Europe gathered in Tunis this week and denounced the upcoming Rome meeting, predicting it would be a value-for-money trade-off to keep migrants off European shores.
“Today, the invitation of the Mediterranean Sea is no longer a bridge between two banks, but rather a wall that separates all of Europe from the entire African continent,” said the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, which organized Thursday’s meeting.
Italy is trying to reduce the number of migrant arrivals and stabilize Tunisia, in its worst economic crisis in a generation. Thousands of migrants have arrived in Sfax this year, but there is no firm figure for how many are in the city, or how many have left since the anti-immigrant crackdown began.
Tunisia has become the main departure point for Italy, the gateway to Europe, replacing Libya, where widespread abuse of migrants has been reported. Of the 76,325 migrants who arrived in Italy so far this year as of last Sunday, 44,151 traveled from Tunisia compared to 28,842 from Libya, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
That sent numbers soaring at the reception center on Italy’s southernmost island of Lampedusa, where officials said 2,500 people were at the site on Sunday after 266 people arrived overnight.
President Kais Saied, Tunisia’s increasingly authoritarian leader, sparked a racist backlash towards migrants in February, saying the arrival of large numbers of sub-Saharan Africans was part of a plot to erase Tunisia’s Islamic identity. He has since tried to walk back such statements, denying racist views and saying the immigrant issue must be dealt with at its root.
This is one of the goals of the Rome Conference, which will bring together nearly 20 heads of state and government or ministers from the Middle East to the Sahel and North Africa, together with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and a group of financial institutions.
The one-day summit is part of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s efforts to put Italy at the center of issues affecting the Mediterranean. The conference aims to come up with concrete proposals to reduce migrant numbers by addressing the root causes, while combating migrant trafficking. It will also discuss energy policies, including ways to diversify energy sources and climate change.
It is widely seen by human rights advocates as a roadmap for what is to come.
The Rome summit comes a week after Saeed signed a memorandum of understanding on a “comprehensive strategic partnership” in a meeting that included Meloni and von der Leyen. Financial details were not disclosed, but the EU has pledged around 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) to help revive Tunisia’s ailing economy, and 100 million euros ($111 million) for border control as well as search and rescue missions at sea and returning migrants without residence permits.
Despite the signing of the agreement, the Tunisian president has stressed in the past that Tunisia will not become the border guard of Europe and will not serve as a resettlement land.
Human rights organizations say that exchanging money for lives is a betrayal of values. For some opponents, these deals are a new form of neo-colonialism.
“The EU not only risks perpetuating (human rights abuses), but also emboldens repressive rulers, who can boast of warmer relations with European partners while demanding credit to secure financial support for their failing economies,” New York-based Human Rights Watch said ahead of the Rome summit.
With high hopes shattered, migrants cower in fear of an anti-immigrant backlash that has forced many to flee their shelters in Sfax and onto buses to unknown locations.
Tunisian security forces dumped at least 500 migrants in the desert border area with Libya earlier this month, but they were transferred on July 10 to other areas in Tunisia, according to the Red Crescent.
Some have been forgotten.
Libyan border guards said on June 16 that in the past few days they had found at least six men, women and children stranded in temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit). This is in addition to the group they encountered that day, when they rescued the migrants who had been gathering in the hot desert for several days near the El-Essa border post. The scene was filmed by the Associated Press.
“There are people who have been harmed as a result of cruelty and beatings … by the Tunisian border guards,” Maj. Ayman al-Qadri, commander of the desert border guards, said, adding that he was citing migrants’ statements.