Tunisia: Arbitrary arrests and hate campaigns on social networks against migrant people from sub-Saharan Africa

ROME – Despite a tradition of welcoming foreigners, the influx of sub-Saharan migrants into the country today is accompanied by an increase in the number of discrimination, ill-treatment and verbal attacks. The complaint comes from Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights together with fifteen other civil society organisations. Africa belongs to Africans said the President of Tunisia, Kais Saied, during the Europe – Africa summit in Brussels on 17 February 2022. Yet, the latest events in the North African country undoubtedly contradict the President’s statements. In Tunisia, in fact, the debate against migrants of sub-Saharan origin is escalating, also following the security campaign aimed at reducing the phenomenon of irregular stay in the country. President Saïed himself chaired a meeting of the National Security Council yesterday afternoon in Carthage dedicated, precisely, to the urgent measures to be taken “to deal with the influx of irregular migrants from the sub-Saharan area to Tunisia”.

Against migration from sub-Saharan countries. More than three hundred people have been arrested and brought to justice in recent days, all of them of sub-Saharan origin. Some were in court to support relatives who had already been arrested in an irregular condition, others were taken into custody during routine street checks. At the same time – denounces the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights – the state is turning a deaf ear to the hate speech and racist speech spread through social networks and in the media also by some political parties, in particular the Nationalist Party. Speeches specifically targeting migrants from sub-Saharan Africa.

The data. According to information released by the National Institute of Statistics in 2021, there are 21,466 people of sub-Saharan origin in Tunisia. Discrimination and violations of rights against this community are reported daily: from arbitrary arrests to confiscation of the telephone to the denial of medical care. For the authorities, Tunisia is considered by the majority of migrants of sub-Saharan origin as a “land of transit”. In practice, migrants stay in the country and work without registering until they can pay for a departure to Europe.

Hate runs on social media and in the media. Last summer, on Facebook, the Nationalist Party called for “the expulsion of the colony of sub-Saharan migrants who had settled in Tunisia”, writes the French newspaper Le Monde. The Nationalist Party did not limit itself to social media, but took the hate campaign to the streets of Tunis on the weekend of 14 and 15 January. On 1 January – Le Monde writes again – the former spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior, Khalifa Chibani, on the waves of Radio Diwan FM, complained about “these Africans who are starting to become too numerous”. The next day the politician and former minister Mabrouk Korchid on IFM radio profiled the risk of a major ethnic replacement: “if Tunisians continue to emigrate, Africans will marry in Tunisia and replace us”.

The externalization of borders. The Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights accuses the policies of externalization of European borders, which have contributed to making Tunisia one of the most active players in the supervision of migration routes in the central Mediterranean. A task that the country carries out with care, going from the interception of the sea vessels outside the territorial waters to the transfer of irregular migrants into the country.

Public opinion. The rise in racism accompanying the growing influx of migrants is not a reality that goes unnoticed: 63 percent of people polled in August 2022 by the Arab Barometer network acknowledged that “discrimination against blacks is a problem”. In 2021, more than 40 percent of the complaints collected by the non-governmental organization Minority Rights Groups for discrimination concerned skin color and racial origin.