Doctors Without Borders warns about these expulsions, which are often violent according to testimonies.
Men, women, and children abandoned in the desert on the border between Algeria and Niger. It is to this situation that Doctors Without Borders draws attention. According to the organization, Algiers continues to forcibly expel, without prior legal proceedings, migrants that the country does not want to see on its territory.
This year, 4,370 migrants were brought from Algeria to Niger under duress. While in 2019 they were some 29,888 deported according to MSF, in 2020 just over 23,000 migrants arrived in the small town of Assamaka, located in the desert on the border between Algeria and Niger. A number that remains high given the fact that the border has been officially closed since March 2020 due to the pandemic. Among those expelled were wounded, pregnant women, and people who had lived in Algeria for years and were building their lives there.
Testimonies reveal cases of violence, including torture. The migrants also recount how they were arrested by the police, detained for days, weeks, or months, and finally forced by Algerian security guards to board buses or trucks that took them to the middle of the desert between l Algeria and Niger where they were often abandoned at night.
