Departures and shipwrecks multiply off Tunisia

Sub-Saharan migrants rescued by the Tunisian Coast Guard, October 4, 2022. AFP - FETHI BELAID

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2 min

Not a day goes by in Tunisia without the sea carrying new bodies. The Coast Guard carried out five times more interceptions at sea in the first quarter of 2023 than last year. Everything has worsened since President Kaïs Saïed's racist speech on the presence of migrants in the country and the situation worries his European partners to the highest degree.

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With our correspondent in Tunis, Amira Souilem

Five times more interceptions at sea in the first quarter of 2023 than last year... The figures of the Tunisian coast guard give the measure of the drama that has been playing out off the Tunisian coast since the beginning of the year. It is now by dozens that are counted the bodies recovered each week. More than 200 corpses rest at this time in the morgue of the hospital of Sfax whose capacity is now greatly exceeded. A project to build a cemetery dedicated to corpses washed up by the sea is now planned in the region.

Since President Kaïs Saïed's speech, equating the presence in Tunisia of thousands of nationals of West and Central African countries with a criminal project aimed at changing Tunisia's supposed Arab-Muslim identity, the departures of Sub-Saharans have multiplied.

Racist discourse and economic crisis

Some hastened their departure to Europe and others decided to go to sea so as not to have to return home. As for Tunisians, the economic and political crisis that has shaken their country for months despairs a fringe of the population who sometimes say they prefer death to stay in a country that, according to them, no longer offers any horizon. The Eid period – considered more relaxed in terms of coastal surveillance – is also conducive to such departures.

If the reasons that push to leave Tunisia are varied, the concern of Europeans and especially Italians – on the front line of these arrivals – is the same, namely that the number of these departures increase even more, thanks to the sunny days that arrive and an economic and social situation that would get bogged down.

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Read on on the same topics:

• Tunisia
• International migration