Dozens of sub-Saharans, including babies, are camping in front of their country’s embassy or inside, after being driven from their homes following measures announced by Tunisia against illegal migrants.
In front of the Embassy of Côte d’Ivoire, there are about fifty of them camping on the grass, including 11 babies and a pregnant woman. With a few blankets and surrounded by their bundles, some have been sleeping outside for four days, AFP noted on Tuesday.
“We need diapers, baby milk, we have nothing to eat,” says drawn features Rokhia Kone, 23, her little one strapped to her back.
Several men show a piece of stale bread which will be their only meal.
A Tunisian lady brought a tarp as the cold is back.
“Where are the NGOs, associations, the Red Crescent, international organizations like the UNHCR (the UN High Commissioner for Refugees) or the OIM (the International Organization for Migration)? It’s a shame and a shame for Tunisians,” activist Monia Ghozali Khraief told AFP.
On her Facebook page followed by 78,000 people, this activist launched an emergency aid collection.
Dozens of people gathered outside the embassy on Tuesday, many of them to obtain a consular card in order to register on a list open since Friday for voluntary repatriation.
“At least 500 people have registered to return to the country” so far, Jean Bedel Gnabli, head of an association of Ivorians, told AFP.
Some are registered but have nowhere to go as Tunisian landlords have been instructed to evict irregular migrants or face heavy fines.
“We want to go back because it’s cold, we want to go back to Côte d’Ivoire,” says a father.
Returnees are urging the embassy to negotiate the lifting of the penalties (80 dinars per month, around 25 euros) that they must pay for having exceeded the legal periods of stay.
– “Chased from their homes” –
At the Mali embassy, around thirty nationals, also without accommodation, are “hosted in the chancellery”, a diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.
“We identify those who want to leave. We already had 200 people on our lists this afternoon,” he says. In the meantime, in addition to those welcomed inside, the embassy “asked Malians in a regular situation to show solidarity and to take some home”.
According to the diplomat, to enforce the measures taken against illegal migrants (eviction from housing and their work), “the police are making rounds”. “People can no longer work and are driven from their homes.”
The diplomat reported tough talks between Bamako and Tunis to get the Tunisian authorities to “remove the penalties and allow our compatriots to return”. “Then we will pick them up, including in Sfax or Monastir to repatriate them,” he said.
Tunisian President Kais Saied on February 21 called for “urgent measures” against the illegal immigration of nationals from sub-Saharan Africa, saying their presence in Tunisia was a source of “violence and crimes” and was part of a “business crime” intended to change the demographic composition of the country.
The head of Tunisian diplomacy Nabil Ammar told AFP on Monday that his country advocated “appeasement”, while ruling out apologizing after the outcry aroused by this speech denounced as “racist and hateful”.
According to the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, Tunisia, a country of 12 million inhabitants, has more than 21,000 nationals from sub-Saharan African countries, most of them in an irregular situation.
The Malian diplomat affirmed that despite official remarks aimed at reassuring, the attacks continued with in particular “a student who had his face slashed in the middle of the street in Bizerte (north) and compatriots insulted and attacked yesterday in the well-to-do neighborhood of La Marsa” in Tunis.
“President Bourguiba’s Tunisia does not deserve a president like Kais Saied,” the Superior Council of the Malian Diaspora denounced in a press release on Tuesday. From Bamako, Malian diplomacy has condemned “unacceptable scenes of physical violence, eviction from buildings or expropriation of property” of migrants in Tunisia.