Human Rights Watch (HRW) has raised concerns over the expulsion of at least 500 sub-Saharan African migrants and asylum seekers by Tunisian security forces without due process.
Development Diaries reports that Tunisian security forces have been collectively expelling the migrants and asylum seekers, including children and pregnant women, since 02 July, 2023, to a remote, militarised buffer zone at the Tunisia-Libya border.
According to HRW, the expelled group includes people with both regular and irregular legal status in Tunisia, with many of them reporting violence by authorities during arrest or expulsion.
‘The Tunisian government should halt collective expulsions and urgently enable humanitarian access to the African migrants and asylum seekers already expelled to a dangerous area at the Tunisia-Libya border, with little food and no medical assistance’, Refugee and Migrant Rights Researcher at HRW, Lauren Seibert, said.
‘Not only is it unconscionable to abuse people and abandon them in the desert, but collective expulsions violate international law’.
Figures from HRW indicate that Tunisian authorities have so far expelled between 500 and 700 people to the border area, around 35 kilometers east of the town Ben Guerdane.
It is understood that the people expelled were of many African nationalities – Ivorian, Cameroonian, Malian, Guinean, Chadian, Sudanese, Senegalese, and others – and included at least 29 children and three pregnant women.
HRW further reported that the people said they had been arrested in raids by police, national guard, or military in and near Sfax, a port city southeast of the capital, Tunis.
Development Diaries calls on the Tunisian authorities to ensure that due process is followed in the eviction of migrants and that their human rights are protected.
Source: HRW
Photo source: RFI
