Hundreds of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, including women and children, are stranded in harsh conditions at the Tunisia-Libya border after being abandoned there by Tunisian authorities, according to testimonies collected on Wednesday by the AFP.
“We are not animals”. Hundreds of African migrants, including women and children, have been stranded for several weeks at the border between Libya and Tunisia after being abandoned there by the Tunisian authorities, according to testimonies collected on Wednesday (July 26th).
About 140 nationals from sub-Saharan Africa – saying they have been there for three weeks – have set up a makeshift camp on the edge of a salt marsh, 30 meters from the Libyan border post of Ras Jedir (in northern Libya).
Without clean water or food, apart from a little bit of aid, women, some of whom are pregnant, men and children struggle to endure the heat by day, the cold by night, on a shattered spit of desert land. sun-kissed and windswept. Often they attempt to cool off by bathing in brackish water.
Following clashes that claimed the life of a Tunisian on July 3, hundreds of Africans were arrested by Tunisian authorities in Sfax. The latter then transported and abandoned them, according to NGOs, in inhospitable areas near Libya to the east and Algeria to the west.
According to Libyan border guards and testimonies collected by AFP, two other groups, of around 100 people each, are in the border area between Libya and Tunisia.
“They took everything from us”
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, the main point of departure for illegal emigration to Europe. “I haven’t seen my baby for three weeks,” she laments. “The Tunisian soldiers brought us here. We don’t have a phone or money. Nothing. They took everything from us.”
“We don’t know where we are. We are suffering here, without food and without water,” George, a 43-year-old Nigerian, told AFP in Ras Jedir. “The Libyans are not allowing us to enter their territory and the Tunisians are preventing us from coming back. We are stuck in the middle of all this. Please help us! Or send a rescue ship,” he said. he implored, calling on European countries.
Chanting “Black lives matter!”, He was joined by other Africans, one of whom held up a sign: “The Tunisian government is killing us slowly. We need help”, but also “We are not animals”.
Over the past ten days, Libyan border guards have sheltered several hundred migrants, found wandering in the desert near Al-Assah, south of Ras Jedir where at least five bodies were found been discovered. Migrants stranded in Ras Jedir share what little food and water the Libyans bring them via the local Red Crescent.
“The women and young girls do not support these conditions. (…) A few days after our arrival here, the Libyan Red Crescent brought us tarpaulins”, insufficient to protect themselves from the burning sun, explains to AFP Mubarak Adam Mohamad, calling on “regional and international organizations” to evacuate them.
“I was arrested by the police in Sfax and brought here by force”, says this 24-year-old young man, who says he fled war-torn Sudan to take refuge first in Libya, then in Tunisia before being “snatched up with all the others”. “The Tunisian army and police are stationed there to prevent people from returning to Tunisia,” he said.
“A situation of great vulnerability”
A total of 1,200 Africans have been “deported” since early July by Tunisian police to border areas with Libya and Algeria, according to the NGO Human Rights Watch.
The Tunisian Red Crescent then went to help about 600 on the Libyan side, and several hundred on the Algerian side, distributed in accommodation centers.
In a press release, the NGO Médecins du Monde called on Wednesday “the Tunisian authorities to facilitate the access of national and international civil society organizations to the areas in which the people displaced by the police in July are located”. , recalling that “these people find themselves in a situation of great vulnerability”.
