Between January 1 and July 20, 2023, 901 migrants were fished out at sea off Tunisia, according to an updated report from the Ministry of the Interior, communicated Thursday July 27 to AFP. Among them, 26 Tunisians, 267 “foreigners” (Africans) and 608 bodies that have not been identified. The National Guard had previously announced to AFP the discovery at sea of ??”789 bodies of migrants, including 102 Tunisians” for the period from January 1 to June 20.
Over the same period, 34,290 migrants were intercepted and rescued, including 30,587 “foreigners”, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, compared to 9,217 migrants intercepted at the same time of 2022 (including 6,597 “foreigners”), according to the door. -Spokesman of the National Guard, Houcem Eddine Jebabli.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, “552 organizers and intermediaries” of these illicit crossings were arrested over the same period. The Coast Guard carried out 1,310 operations in six months, more than double the year before (607), according to Houcem Eddine Jebabli.
Tunisia, parts of whose coastline are less than 150 kilometers from the Italian island of Lampedusa, regularly records the departure of migrants, most often from sub-Saharan Africa. According to Rome, more than 80,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean and arrived on the coasts of the Italian peninsula since the beginning of the year, compared to 33,000 last year over the same period, mostly from the Tunisian coast and from Libya.
The central Mediterranean – between North Africa and Italy – is the most dangerous migration route in the world in 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which has recorded more than 20,000 deaths since 2014.
Since the coup by Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed in July 2021, by which he seized all the powers, the attempts to leave Tunisians desperate by the economic crisis hitting this Maghreb country continue at a steady pace. On June 22, a week after a trawler from Libya sank off the Peloponnese, killing at least 82 and leaving hundreds missing, a migrant boat from Sfax in Tunisia capsized off Lampedusa, causing a forty missing.
Hundreds of sub-Saharan migrants were arrested and driven out of Sfax (East) following clashes that claimed the life of a Tunisian on July 3. This port city has become this year the first point of departure in Tunisia for emigration to Italy. A total of 1,200 Africans were “deported” by Tunisian police to inhospitable border areas with Libya and Algeria, according to the NGO Human Rights Watch.
On Wednesday, an AFP photo and video team collected the harrowing testimonies of a group of 140 people, abandoned in the desert buffer zone of Ras Jedir, in Libya. Left without water or food on the edge of a salt marsh, they receive a little bit of help from the Libyan authorities, via the local Red Crescent.
Fatima, a 36-year-old Nigerien, found herself in Ras Jedir with her husband, separated from their three-year-old child who remained in Sfax. “I haven’t seen my baby in three weeks,” she says. “The Tunisian soldiers brought us here. We don’t have a phone or money. Nothing. They took everything from us. “The Libyans do not allow us to enter their territory and the Tunisians prevent us from returning. We are stuck in the middle of it all. Please help us! implored George, a 43-year-old Nigerian, calling out to European countries.
The European Union signed in mid-July “a strategic partnership” with Tunis which provides for the granting of 105 million euros to Tunisia to fight against illegal immigration, including 15 million to finance 6,000 “voluntary returns of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa in their countries of origin.
