Their names were Fati and Marie. Their bodies were left inert, stranded in the vast desert. Until a few days ago they were found. Fati Dosso, 30, and her daughter Marie, barely six years old, put a face to the hell that hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers are experiencing, abandoned by the Tunisian security forces on the cruel border with Libya, a militarized zone in no man’s land.
In the last two weeks, 25 people have been found dead on this border amid a wave of mass expulsions of migrants from Tunisia to Libya. The place, beyond the Ras Ajdir crossing, is inhospitable: a desert where temperatures can reach over 50 degrees and where no one can survive without shelter, water or food. The Tunisian authorities began a campaign of deportations earlier this July, when clashes broke out fueled by racial hatred stirred up by Tunisian President Kais Saied.
Hundreds of sub-Saharan migrants and refugees, including minors and pregnant women, are currently blocked at the border. In Ras Ajdir, the makeshift camps that were already erected in February 2011, when sub-Saharan, Arab and Asian immigrants who worked in Libya fled from clashes between rebels and Gadhafi troops, have been repeated. Now, the situation is repeated, but in the opposite direction.
If the drama that is experienced on this border has a face, it is undoubtedly those of Fati and his daughter Marie. The Refugees in Libya network has shed light on their story. They were not alone, they were accompanied by Mbengue Nyimbilo Crepin, known as Pato, Fati’s husband and Marie’s father, who has outlived his small family. He has been in shock ever since they showed him the photos of the bodies: “It’s exactly the same position the two of them always take to sleep. I was hoping that maybe they were just tired and would come back, but so far they’re not there.” Pato tries to overcome the pain of his loss: “What hurts me is that they knew before they died that I would also die because of the state in which they left me, but God saved me. I went to Libya to surprise my family, rather I’m the surprised one.”
Tunisian and international human rights organizations, in addition to the UN, have condemned the expulsions and mistreatment of migrants, especially those of sub-Saharan origin, by the Tunisian authorities. Since the beginning of the year, Tunisia has been experiencing a wave of racial tension, fueled by President Saied, who blamed African migrants for all the ills the country suffers.
Two weeks ago, the European Union signed a migration agreement with Tunisia. In exchange for 1,000 million euros, the North African country in exchange for cutting migratory flows. The Tunisian coasts have become in recent months the epicenter of clandestine emigration to the north, especially to Italy, with more than 70,000 people – Tunisians, but also sub-Saharan Africans – so far in 2023. On the other side of the currency, more than 900 migrants and refugees have drowned on this Mediterranean route, the Tunisian authorities revealed on Thursday.
With the images of Fati and Marie stranded in the desert – reminiscent of little Aylan, the Kurdish boy drowned on the Greek coast in 2015 – Europe looks in the mirror to face the true meaning of its “border externalization” policies.
Pato came to Libya from Cameroon fleeing army violence after soldiers killed her sister. Fati, whose full name is Matyla Dosso, was born in the Ivory Coast and fled religious persecution. She was an orphan. Born in 1993, both met in Libya, in the Qarabulli camp, in 2016, from where they were preparing together with other refugees to jump to Italy. “We met in June 2016 and we had Marie on March 12, 2017,” says Pato.
With Fati pregnant, they tried their first crossing. They tried four more times. The four were detained by the Libyan coast guard and sent to jail. The last one, in August 2021. In 2019, while they were in the Tajura detention center, a bombardment in the middle of the conflict between militias left Pato injured and pierced his ear. Finally, Pato and Fati decided to flee violent Libya with her daughter and settle in Tunisia, where they hoped the girl could finally go to school. They left on July 13 but ran into a hostile Tunisian police officer who beat them and stole their phones. “They sent us back to the desert. We stayed there all day and on Friday night we tried again, but this time we succeeded. On Saturday morning we were already in Ben Gardane, Zarzis. We were looking for a place where we could drink water and that’s where the police intercepted my wife, my daughter and me”, recalls the Cameroonian.
Expelled to no man’s land, they suffered mistreatment by the gendarmes and hunger and thirst. Stranded in the uninhabitable desert, with about 30 other people, without water, they tried to walk deep into Libya to reach the first city. Pato, exhausted, implored his wife and daughter to go on without him. They left when he no longer had the strength to continue. Night fell and some Sudanese found him and tried to revive him by giving him water. They offered to join them as far as Libya. Pato walked thinking that Fati and Marie would be on the other side. Images of people who had died on the journey began to circulate on social networks. “When they showed me the photos I recognized their clothes and their bodies,” he told Refugees in Libya. He now struggles to find out which morgue they were taken to and to be able to recover their remains: “Even if it costs me my life.”
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
