Not a day goes by in Tunisia without the sea carrying new bodies. The Coast Guard made five times more interceptions at sea in the first quarter of 2023 than last year. Everything has worsened since the racist speech of President Kaïs Saïed on the presence of migrants in the country and the situation worries his European partners to the highest degree.
Five times more interceptions at sea in the first quarter of 2023 than last year… The figures from the Tunisian coast guard give a measure of the drama that has been playing out off the Tunisian coast since the beginning of the year. It is now by the dozens that the bodies fished out each week can be counted. More than 200 corpses lie at this time in the morgue of the Sfax hospital, the capacity of which is now very largely exceeded. A project to build a cemetery dedicated to corpses washed up by the sea is now planned in the region.
Since the speech of President Kaïs Saïed, assimilating the presence in Tunisia of thousands of nationals of West and Central African countries to a criminal project aimed at modifying the supposed Arab-Muslim identity of Tunisia, the departures of sub-Saharans have multiplied.
Speeches fueling racism and the economic crisis
Some have hastened their departure for Europe and others have decided to set sail so as not to have to return home. As for the Tunisians, the economic and political crisis which has been shaking their country for months drives a section of the population to despair, which sometimes says it prefers death to stay in a country which, according to them, no longer offers any horizon. The Eid period – considered to be more relaxed in terms of coastal surveillance – is also conducive to this type of departure.
If the reasons which push to leave Tunisia are varied, the concern of Europeans and in particular of Italians – in the front line of these arrivals – is the same, namely that of seeing the number of these departures increase even more, thanks to of the good weather that is coming and of an economic and social situation that would get bogged down.
