Several hundred migrants, abandoned in a desert area on the border between Tunisia and Libya after being evacuated from the city of Sfax last week, were sheltered on Monday (July 10th) in cities in southern Tunisia. But NGOs are concerned about the fate of dozens of others pushed back to the Algerian border, while at least two migrants have been found dead in recent days in areas on the border between Tunisia and Algeria.

"All of the 500 to 700 migrants who were at the border with Libya have been transferred elsewhere," Salsabil Chellali, head of Human Rights Watch in Tunis, told AFP.

Following clashes that claimed the life of a Tunisian man, dozens of migrants were driven out of Sfax, which has become the main departure point for irregular immigration to Europe. And were taken by the authorities, according to NGOs, to inhospitable areas bordering Libya and Algeria.

" READ ALSO In Sfax, Tunisia, the distress of migrants abandoned to their fate

"A first body was found at least ten days ago in the desert of Hazoua [near the Algerian border, editor's note] and another last night," Nizar Skander spokesman for the court of Tozeur, in southeastern Tunisia, told AFP on Tuesday (July 11th), a body that has "opened an investigation for suspicious death".

"They were two young men, the civil protection came to look for the one who was found yesterday," the witness, a local shopkeeper who requested anonymity, told AFP.

Those picked up by Tunisian authorities at the Libyan border, in the militarized buffer zone of Ras Jedir, were divided into several groups, according to NGOs and media reports. "A group is in Medenine, at a high school guarded by security forces," the HRW official said.

"Violent arrests and forced evictions"

An AFP correspondent saw another contingent arrive in Ben Guerdane, also housed in a high school under the control of the security forces. A dozen exhausted and dehydrated migrants had to be hospitalized in the city while others were taken by bus to Tataouine and Gabes, according to news reports.

The Tunisian association Beity for helping women victims of violence had launched Monday an urgent appeal to other NGOs and public institutions to "coordinate and pool resources" to provide emergency aid to sub-Saharan migrants "deported to the gates of the Sahara".

HRW's Salsabil Chellali said: "It is a relief to know that they were able to leave the border area with Libya, but many other people deported near the Algerian border risk their lives if they are not immediately rescued." According to HRW, there are at least 150 to 200 in this situation.

" READ ALSO Tunisia: the migratory challenge

"Please help us, if you can send the Red Cross here, help us otherwise we will die, there is nothing here, there is no food, there is no water," Mamadou, a Guinean, told AFP by telephone. According to him, they are about thirty abandoned to their fate in a desert area near the Algerian village of Douar El Ma, close to the Tunisian border.

In a statement, the refugee aid organization Refugees International denounced "the violent arrests and forced expulsions of hundreds of black African migrants" in Sfax, stressing that some were nevertheless "registered with the High Commissioner for Refugees or have legal status in Tunisia".

Increasingly openly xenophobic discourse

The World Organisation Against Torture in Tunisia (OMCT) announced for its part that it had seized the UN Committee against Torture to denounce the specific case of "VF, a migrant of sub-Saharan origin deported to the border between Tunisia and Libya on July 2" after being arrested without cause and "beaten with an iron bar in security posts" in Ben Guerdane.

This ill-treatment, as well as the deprivation of food and water for "more than 700 migrants" held in the buffer zone, "knowingly imposed by state agents on VF and other migrants because of their racial affiliation in order to force them to leave the territory, constitute torture," OMCT added.

An increasingly openly xenophobic discourse towards these migrants has spread since Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed attacked illegal immigration in February, presenting it as a demographic threat to his country, which is plagued by a socio-economic crisis that has worsened since he assumed full powers in July 2021.

On Saturday, he denounced "lies spread on social networks", saying that migrants in Tunisia received "humane treatment in accordance with our values, contrary to what is said in colonial circles and among the agents who work in their service", according to a statement from the presidency.

On Monday evening, he said in a new statement that "Tunisia has taught the world a lesson with the way it has taken care of these migrants," adding, however, that it "refuses to be a substitute homeland for them and will only accept those who are in a regular situation."

With AFP

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