Tunisia, in Sfax young nationalists drive out sub-Saharans house by house and parade them on the street with their hands up

ROME – More than 500 sub-Saharan migrants were arrested in Sfax and taken to the Libyan or Algerian border after the gendarmerie raided neighborhoods populated by people from various African countries. He reports it Human Rights Watch (HRW). To support the Tunisian police there were groups of young people armed with sticks and stones who threatened African immigrants in the neighborhoods of Sfax, where they somehow found accommodation. According to some humanitarian organizations, a real propaganda campaign is underway on social networks, orchestrated by members of the Tunisian Nationalist Party, with xenophobic and conspiratorial statements.

Kicked out of their homes, they parade with their hands up. There are several videos, posted on Facebook and Tik Tok, in which dozens of young Tunisians can clearly be seen chasing sub-Saharan migrants in neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city 270 km south of Tunis, Tunisia’s second largest. Meanwhile, in the district of Rbatt – also in Sfax – other groups of young people have driven out the sub-Saharans from the houses where they were staying. With their faces covered by a bandana and sticks in their hands, they parade them with their hands up in the street, as can be clearly seen in a video released on TikTok on July 5 by one of the participants in the attack.

“They want to be gendarmes instead of the police”. “They are people who have arbitrarily assumed the role of gendarmes” Zied Mallouli is the founder of a popular initiative in Sfax called Sayyeb Ettrotoir (“melting the sidewalk”) initially intended to denounce pollution and the illegal use of public space, launched in 2015. saying that tensions had erupted in the neighborhood and a bloodbath was brewing. I went there to speak to the young people who had presented themselves in front of the homes of the sub-Saharans, ready to do battle. We tried to calm their anger and explain to them that enforcing justice is not their responsibility.”

The invitation to carry out “mass justice”. On the other hand, the police are not welcome in these disadvantaged areas of the city, already sensitive to them, and where coexistence with sub-Saharan immigrants generates a war between the poor, which has already been seen in a thousand other similar situations. Several young Tunisians were also arrested, including minors, who had joined the calls on social networks to attack blacks in Sfax and the invitations addressed to the civilian population to carry out their own “mass justice”.

A court inquiry has been launched. Another video shows the kidnapping of sub-Saharan migrants forced to ask Tunisians for “forgiveness” for the alleged violence they allegedly unleashed in Sfax. The same video also calls for the creation of a state within a state, for the self-management of security in Sfax. The city’s Court of First Instance has opened an investigation into Marwen Mestiri, alias “El Brince”, after publishing videos such as those just mentioned, in which she films sub-Saharan migrants in front of the camera asking Tunisians for forgiveness.

The role of the Nationalist Party on young people. Zied Mallouli, the activist who fights for the defense of rights then reports that most of the armed attacks take place in the districts north of Sfax and in the surrounding countryside, where communities of sub-Saharan citizens live. “These young people he says – who a few months ago played football together and sympathized with other young migrants, now they attack them. with sticks and edged weapons. In my opinion – he adds – they are indoctrinated by nationalist and xenophobic adults, who unfortunately are prevailing. There is also a lot of rhetoric conveyed by the Nationalist Party – says Zied Mallouli – one of whose members incites the inhabitants of the Rbatt neighborhood on video on TikTok to go and attack the migrants gathered at the Sidi Lakhmi mosque, in the center of Sfax ” .