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Rights groups have accused Tunisia of transporting hundreds of sub-Saharan migrants to its remote border with Libya and leaving them to fend for themselves, as the EU negotiates a deal with the north African country to stem migrant flows into Europe.
Human Rights Watch said 500-700 migrants expelled since Sunday after clashes with Tunisian citizens in the coastal city of Sfax were now trapped on the desert border without food, shelter or medical support.
Lauren Seibert, its refugee and migrants rights researcher who has been in touch with the migrants, said the group was hemmed in by soldiers from both countries who were preventing them from moving. “The migrants have told me about beatings when they tried to go in either direction,” she said.
Tensions between Tunisians and sub-Saharan Africans in Sfax have been simmering for months. “Police in Sfax has been cracking down arbitrarily on anyone with black skin,” Seibert said, adding that a Tunisian and a man from Benin were killed in clashes there in recent days.
Kais Saied, Tunisia’s authoritarian president, has been accused of sparking the crisis after he alleged in February that migrants were part of a conspiracy to change the country’s demographic make up. His statements unleashed a wave of racist violence against sub-Saharan Africans in Tunisia.
Talks continue between Brussels and Tunis that would provide more than €1bn in EU support for Tunisia’s floundering economy and stem the flow of migration from its shores to Europe. The package, which includes €105mn for border control, was announced last month during a visit to Tunis by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, but finalising the details has taken longer than expected.
The commission said it was aware of the anti-migrant protests in Sfax and called on the authorities to calm the tensions. “The EU is ready to support the urgent structural reforms that [Tunisia] will undertake, including in the area of migration,” the commission said.
European officials have warned that a potential implosion of the Tunisian economy would result in more migrants crossing the Mediterranean. Italy, where arrivals have soared more than tenfold from the start of the year, has played a key part in lobbying the EU for support to the north African country.
Seibert of Human Right Watch said: “If EU funding contributes to human rights violations because it supports security forces abusing people then it’s highly problematic. [The EU] need to look at what it actually means on the ground.”
The Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Right, a think-tank, has also criticised the EU deal, calling it “an attempt to exploit [Tunisia’s] political, economic and social fragility”. It said on Thursday that the migrant group taken to the border “include asylum seekers, women and children” and that the process had “been accompanied by severe human rights violations”.
Seibert said Tunisian forces have thrown out food the migrants brought with them before leaving them. Uniformed Libyan forces provided some water and biscuits for about 20 children in the stranded group, said Seibert.
“They’re telling me disturbing things about people drinking seawater and getting sick,” she added. “They need urgent assistance.”