By Tarek Amara
Tunis (Reuters) – The Tunisian authorities have dismantled makeshift camps housing 7,000 sub -Saharan African migrants and began to force some of them, a senior official told Reuters, while the country is struggling with an unprecedented migrant crisis.
Houssem Eddine Jebabli, a national guard official, told Reuters that a number of migrants had been arrested for violence during the current operation. He said that their forced repatriation had started on Friday evening and that the authorities were also trying to voluntarily repatriate thousands of others.
He said that the number expelled by force was significant, without specifying how much, and that blade weapons, including knives and swords, have been seized.
The Tunisian government said that around 20,000 migrants lived in tents in the forests of southern cities, such as Amra and Jbeniana, after the authorities prevented them from traveling through the Mediterranean.
Migrants frequently clashed with local residents, who want them to be expelled from their region.
Local human rights groups have criticized the authorities, accusing them of racist rhetoric, incentive against migrants and condemning a repression which led to the imprisonment of activists who helped African migrants.
President Kais Saied said that in 2023, the arrival of thousands of illegal migrants from sub -Saharan African countries was a “plot to change the country’s demographic makeup”.
It prompted the African Union to condemn what it called Tunisia’s “hate speech” against migrants, an allegation said that Saied was unfair.
Tunisia has won the praise of the Italian authorities in recent months for its progress in the flow of thousands of migrants from sub -Sahran Africa who are trying to reach Europe in boats.
(Report by Tarek Amara; edition by Barbara Lewis)
