The Tunisian government has defended its treatment of West African nationals transiting through the country after human rights groups reported that Tunisian authorities expelled hundreds of migrants to the Libyan border.
Tunisia is battling a summer surge of Sub-Saharan African immigration as the country’s ports and cities become major transit hubs for those wishing to enter Europe, sparking a wave of sporadic violent clashes between migrants and locals.
Tunisian security services reportedly commenced dumping migrants primarily from West Africa at an outpost near the Libyan border last week after conducting multiple raids on migrant squats in the coastal city of Sfax.
This week’s crackdown was partially prompted by the murder of a Tunisian man in an altercation with migrants. The murdered 41-year-old had himself been engaged in an attack on a migrant community. The intercommunal violence resulting from the murder left 40 migrants badly injured.
In recent months, Tunisian society has buckled under the pressure of tens of thousands of Africans entering the country on their way to Europe as the port city of Sfax has become the epicentre in violent clashes between African migrants and Tunisians.
The country’s President Kais Saied shrugged off suggestions that his nation’s security services acted too heavy-handedly, saying that foreign powers were seeking to undermine his nation through immigration.
Saied shot to international prominence for his comments about African immigration earlier this year linking the immigration wave to a rise in violent crime and an organised plot to replace the Tunisian people by sinister global elites.
The immigration crisis comes amid a tanking Tunisian economy and a poor labour market ill-suited for the influx as some West African embassies began campaigns to attract their citizens into coming home.
Tunisia has endured over a decade of economic stagnation following the overthrow of the Ben Ali government in 2011. The Tunisian government sought financial assistance from the IMF in October 2022.
Tunisia is playing an increasingly important role in European border security after the Italian government under Giorgia Meloni brokered a deal in June to direct up to a billion euros in EU financial assistance to Tunisia in exchange for cooperating on stopping immigration. The EU and Italy hope that Tunisia will play a greater role in the dismantling of smuggling networks that ferry migrants into Europe through Tunisia and Libya.
