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Migrants and refugees in Tunisia fall back on grassroots solidarity after Kais Saied's racist speech precipitates attacks [1]
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Date: 2023-05
It’s dangerous to be a migrant in Tunisia right now.
The country’s president, Kais Saied, recently claimed in a high-profile speech that “hordes” of migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa were part of a “criminal enterprise … aimed at changing the demographic composition of Tunisia” and erasing its “Arab-Muslim” heritage. Just this month the police evicted dozens of migrants who had set up camp outside the UNHCR building to protest their treatment. And the possibility of illegal pushbacks and deadly shipwrecks lies in wait for anybody who, escaping violence and precarity, decides to try their luck on the Mediterranean.
Migrants in Tunisia aren’t the only ones caught up in the current global attack on the right to seek asylum. The UK government is pursing what is essentially “an asylum ban,” the US government is in the middle of a border crackdown, and EU leaders are doing all they can to reinforce “Fortress Europe.” But their predicament highlights how, for refugees, the situation is quickly becoming ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’. They face inhumane and counterproductive policies both where they are and wherever they are trying to get to.
Migrants have not given up though. Instead, their response and that of their allies has been resistance and solidarity. It gives us hope.
Migrants as a scapegoat for a failing state
While Saied did not invent anti-black racism in Tunisia, these days he is blatantly stoking it for political advantage. Following his speech some Tunisians went out and assaulted or robbed migrants and refugees. Others evicted them from their homes or terminated their jobs. Saied denied he was racist in the aftermath and promised legal consequences for perpetrators. But he continued to insist that migration to Tunisia was a “plot”, despite the fact that more than 270,000 Tunisians have left since 2010 and less than 60,000 refugees and migrants from outside Tunisia have stayed.
The president’s hate speech also “sow[ed] confusion and panic” abroad, as European leaders see Tunisia as a bulwark against Sub-Saharan and North African migrants. The Italian government reacted by asking the International Monetary Fund to release a $1.9 billion loan to tackle “instability”, while the EU’s foreign policy chief warned that if Tunisia “collapses … new flows of migrants will come to Europe”.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/migrant-solidarity-in-tunisia-offers-hope-after-racist-attacks/
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