A blanket on the ground, a tarp stretched over a tree: “we have no place to go, no water or food”, explains Nasra, a nine-month pregnant Yemeni, refugee since Wednesday like a hundred other applicants asylum near the headquarters of the International Organization for Migration in Tunis.
Until the day before, Nasra Mohammed, 27, survived with her husband and their seven children in an improvised camp in front of the building of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in the chic Lac district, thanks to help from volunteers.
Originally from fifteen countries, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, these refugees awaiting evacuation “to a safe country” were dispersed on Tuesday during a forceful intervention by the police and their camp was dismantled.
Officers used tear gas and made arrests after a group tried to enter the building, according to official Tunisian sources.
The already precarious situation of asylum seekers has deteriorated in Tunisia since an inflammatory speech on February 21 by President Kais Saied against illegal immigration.
Hundreds of economic migrants, most of them in transit in Tunisia to try to reach Europe, then took refuge in their embassies and a large number were repatriated, in particular to Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Guinea and Mali.
Others embarked clandestinely on board boats at the risk of their lives. Several crossings to Italy ended in shipwrecks that left dozens dead and missing.
Unlike migrants, asylum seekers cannot turn to their embassies because they risk reprisals in their countries. In addition, they are supposed to benefit from UNHCR protection.
Asked by AFP, the UN agency did not respond on Wednesday to the type of rights associated with this status.
On its Facebook page, the Tunisian headquarters of the UNHCR limited itself to expressing its “deep rejection of the violence” of the previous day.
According to the UNHCR, “a small group” out of a total of “200 refugees, asylum seekers and migrants carrying out a sit-in for three weeks” in front of its premises, “entered by force, causing material damage”.
The organization “reaffirmed its commitment to continue to provide protection and life-saving assistance to displaced people in Tunisia”.
Nasra and her family left war-torn Yemen in 2020 and arrived in Tunisia in April 2022 after traveling through Sudan, Ethiopia, Niger, Algeria and then Libya.
“We are told to return to our country but there is war and famine… My husband is threatened with death there,” she confides.
Nasra does not hide his disappointment with the UNHCR, which called in the police “to be protected: protected from whom? from refugees fleeing war, from children, from people seeking peace?”.
Very dignified, surrounded by her children aged 2 to 12, Nasra appeals “to all countries to get us out of Tunisia where we are dying watching our children”.
Omar Khaled Ismaïl, a 17-year-old Sudanese asylum seeker, had been working since his arrival in November 2022 and staying with his employer. But, after the president’s speech which triggered a campaign against undeclared labour, he found himself on the street.
“I no longer have a job or where to go so I came back to the UNHCR: they assured me that they had hired a lawyer to discuss with the (Tunisian) state in order to find a solution to our problems”, he explains. he, anxious to find a decent place to spend the night.
Amar, 19, another asylum seeker who fled war in the Central African Republic aged 9 and arrived in Tunis in 2021 after living in a refugee camp in Chad, is also turning to UNHCR .
“We are refugees. We want to be taken to a country other than Tunisia where you can have respect, where you can live and go to the supermarket without being attacked or insulted,” he said.
04/12/2023 18:39:39 – Tunis (AFP) – © 2023 AFP