Crackdown on Black Africans Fuels Attacks and Rebuke in Tunisia

Souhail Karam
·4 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- After Tunisia’s president blamed African migrants for a rise in violent crime and threatening the country’s Arab identity, 42-year-old Francois had a knock on his front door.

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It was his landlord trying to kick him out, along with his wife and two-year-old son, wrongly saying he could no longer offer lodgings to Black migrant tenants as a government-sanctioned crackdown against illegal residents escalated in the North African nation.

“I told him he’d have to kill me because I am not leaving my house,” said Francois, who resides in Tunisia legally as a registered refugee. A soccer talent scout who fled Ivory Coast five years ago, he asked to use his first name to speak freely about the incident last week in a country where sub-Saharan Africans have recently been attacked, assaulted and vilified.

Less than five years after Tunisia became the first Arab nation to criminalize racism, rights groups now accuse President Kais Saied of stoking xenophobia to deflect from a growing economic and political crisis. Saied says he’s falsely accused of racism by political opponents and only seeks to ensure laws on illegal migration are enforced. He’s told authorities not to apprehend Africans who reside legally in Tunisia. His spokesman, Walid El Hajjam, didn’t reply to written questions about the violence against sub-Saharan African migrants and how authorities intend to stop it.Burkina Faso and Mali invited their nationals to register for repatriation flights while hundreds of Ivorian expatriates sought refuge at their country’s embassy.Saied has added illegal migrants to those he blames for Tunisia’s woes since a popular uprising overthrew long-time dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.

Last week, Saied told his security chiefs to act quickly against “hordes” of people he said were trafficked to Tunisia by parties he only described as “claiming to stand for human rights” and bent on changing Tunisia’s demographics for money and political gain.

“There are parties that received large sums of money after 2011 to settle illegal migrants from sub-Saharan Africa in Tunisia,” he said, according to the presidency’s Facebook page. His comments partly resembled a conspiracy theory propounded by far-right circles in Europe. French writer and media pundit Eric Zemmour, who has been convicted of hate speech, welcomed them.

The African Union condemned “the shocking statement issued by Tunisian authorities targeting fellow Africans” and summoned the Tunisian envoy for urgent consultations.

There are around 21,000 sub-Saharan Africans living in Tunisia, according to FTDES, a social and economic rights advocacy group. That’s out of a total population of about 12 million.

Saied’s comments come at a time when popular discontent is growing about the economy. Tunisians are struggling with shortages in food staples like cooking oil and coffee as well as medicine. That’s in part due to government-imposed import curbs to save foreign currency.

Rights groups say hundreds of African migrants are now seeking to flee Tunisia after the unprecedented wave of violence, arrests and evictions. Many came to Tunisia to study or to take on jobs in construction, childcare and in hotels, but some have used it as an illegal transit point for crossing into Europe.

Tunisia, like other North African countries, has come under pressure from European governments to reduce crossings. But Saied’s critics say the approach has resulted in an authorized witch hunt by vigilantes and gangs targeting the most vulnerable.

“Acts of xenophobic violence against sub-Saharan Africans are surging across Tunisia,” Salsabil Chellali, Tunisia director for Human Rights Watch, told Bloomberg. She couldn’t give specifics on the number of victims, but said the violence against black Africans was worse than anything the country has seen before.

The rare racial violence was triggered by the presidency’s use of “hateful and xenophobic remarks at a time of deep crisis,” Chellali said.

It’s not just evictions. Last week, four female Ivorian exchange students were assaulted near El Manar university in Tunis, leading a students’ group to tell their members to stay away from school. Ivory Coast’s government said Wednesday it was preparing to evacuate 500 of its nationals in an operation that will cost 1 billion CFA francs ($1.6 million).

In a statement Sunday, a group of opposition parliamentarians in Ivory Coast said Saied’s remarks “tainted with hatred, contempt and racism endanger the safety and physical integrity of members of sub-Saharan African communities, including many Ivorians.”

Dozens of Ivorians were forced to leave rented homes and more than 100 were arrested since the start of February, according to the Association of Ivorians in Tunisia’s vice chairman, Laurent Oulleye.

Hundreds of Tunisians protested at the weekend to denounce the attacks with some carrying signs denouncing “fascism.” A group of opposition parties accused Saied of undoing six decades of effort that went into building Tunisia’s ties in the African continent.

Illegal status doesn’t justify depriving migrants of their rights, said Romdhane Ben Omar, a spokesman from FTDES, which is involved in the protests.

“We are marching to say that Tunisia will not be racist, Tunisia will not be fascist.”

--With assistance from Katarina Hoije.

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