TUNIS, Tunisia: Human Rights Watch (HRW) Wednesday called on the European Union (EU) to suspend migration control funding to Tunisia as it said the country’s security forces have committed “serious abuses” against black African migrants.
The New York-based watchdog said it had interviewed, since March, more than 20 migrants and asylum seekers, almost all of whom reported suffering “human rights violations at the hands of Tunisian authorities”.
Under Sunday’s agreement, the EU would grant 105 million euros ($118 million) to Tunis in equipment and financing for the voluntary return of 6,000 sub-Saharan Africans.
HRW said EU members should withhold their support for migration and border management under that deal “until a thorough human rights impact assessment is carried out”.
Seven were among “up to 1,200 black Africans expelled or forcibly transferred by Tunisian security forces” to the country’s desert border regions with Algeria and Libya this month.
AFP correspondents reported on Sunday that Libyan border guards rescued dozens of migrants who were visibly dehydrated and exhausted, and who said Tunisian authorities had taken them there.
This followed testimony from NGOs and witnesses to AFP a few days after hundreds were expelled from the Tunisian port city of Sfax in early July.
On Sunday, Tunisia and the EU signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for a “strategic and comprehensive partnership” on irregular migration, economic development and renewable energy.
About 130 kilometres from the Italian island of Lampedusa in Tunisia is a gateway for migrants and asylum-seekers attempting dangerous sea voyages to Europe.
On the other hand, European leaders have been concerned by the flow as well as by Tunisia’s economic challenges.
HRW quoted as many as seven expelled migrants having reported that “the military and national guard left them in the desert with insufficient food and water. While some were relocated back into Tunisia a week later by Tunisian authorities, others still needed assistance or were unaccounted for.”
The expulsions came as racial tensions flared after a Tunisian man was killed in a clash between locals and migrants in Sfax on July 3.
The watchdog said most of the abuses it put on record came after President Kais Saied in February accused “hordes” of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa of bringing violence, alleging a “criminal plot” to change the country’s demographic makeup.
“Documented abuses include beatings, use of excessive force, some cases of torture, arbitrary arrests and detention, collective expulsions, dangerous actions at sea, forced evictions, and theft of money and belongings,” HRW said in its report.
Saied last week said that what Tunisia offered migrants “is better than what they find elsewhere”. But he added: “We refuse to be a land of transit or a land of settlement.” —AFP
