fact finder
In Tunisia there have been violent attacks on black migrants for weeks. The violence is fueled by misinformation spread on social networks – including by the President.
After the death of a 42-year-old man, clashes between Tunisians and migrants from countries south of the Sahara have broken out again in the Tunisian port of Sfax since the beginning of the month. The Tunisian authorities blame three men from Cameroon for the death of the Tunisian. They are said to have stabbed him.
Since then, some citizens have repeatedly violently attacked migrants on the street, verbally abused them or forcibly evicted them from their homes. Others try to help, distributing water and food to the men, women and children, many of whom have only been able to find a place to sleep on the streets for weeks.
President spread conspiracy stories
Hatred of migrants is reinforced by disinformation on social networks. At the end of February this year, Tunisian President Kais Saied unleashed a wave of violence against migrants after he issued a statement claiming that “hordes of illegal migrants” were pouring into Tunisia with the aim of “changing the country’s demographic composition” and to destroy his Arab-Muslim identity. Certain parties would receive huge sums of money for this, and the migrants would bring “violence, crime and unacceptable practices that go with it” into the country.
Figures from the National Statistics Institute according to a total of only around 21,000 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa living in Tunisia in 2020 and 2021. Monica Marks, assistant professor of Middle East politics at New York University in Abu Dhabi, calls the fact that the president speaks of “hordes of illegal migrants” against the background of these figures as a “serious distortion of reality”.
Saied tries to “conjure up false threats to Tunisia” by telling stories about migrants like this in order to “distract people from the difficult reality in which they live,” says Marks. Because in Tunisia the economic situation is getting worse and worse and Saied has been increasingly restricting the political freedoms of its citizens for around two years.
“Then the situation in real life escalated”
According to Zyna Mejri, founder of the Tunisian fact-checking collective Falso, Saied’s statements have multiplied anti-migrant hate speech in the country. “With that statement, the President gave people the green light to be racist.” First, migrants were hated online “and then the situation escalated in real life,” she says.
In the meantime, the violence was so great that, according to media reports, many migrants, but also black Tunisians, who make up around ten to 15 percent of the population, no longer dared to leave their homes. Members of civil society were also verbally attacked because they campaigned for migrants in the country and organized demonstrations and fundraisers.
Last year Saied had enacted a law criminalizing the dissemination of false information. People charged under this law face up to ten years in prison. So far, this has mainly affected lawyers and journalists. No one has yet been charged with spreading misinformation about migrants.
Disinformation with videos from other countries
Shortly after the release of the February statement by the President, Mejri’s organization Falso saw a surge in misinformation about migrants on social media. “Before such videos only had a few thousand views and likes on TikTok, after that we saw millions of likes, shares and negative comments,” says Mejri.
The accounts Mejri speaks of share videos that allegedly show migrants in Tunisia. In some of these videos, angry demonstrating crowds can be seen, and writings that were subsequently superimposed on the videos say things like “Tunisia under occupation” or “Tunisia has become the kingdom of the Africans”. Other videos, according to the accounts that distribute them, show large groups of migrants making their way to Tunisia – some of them even armed.
Analysis of the BBC show, however, that these videos were not recorded in Tunisia at all, but in Senegal and Sudan, among other places. They do not show migrants in Tunisia either, but other events. For example, a video shows a demonstration in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. This can be seen from a prominent obelisk that can be seen in the video. The Senegalese flag can also be seen. But many users overlook these details and believe the headlines, which claim the video shows a large, angry group of migrants in Tunisia.
conspiracy narrative from the “Great Exchange”
The misinformation and conspiracy stories about migrants in Tunisia started back in 2018 when the Tunisian Nationalist Party was founded, says Mejri. In 2022, this party even wrote a report on the racist conspiracy narrative of the “Great Exchange” by migrants from sub-Saharan Africa in Tunisia.
According to this narrative, “Europeans and Americans would use black people to colonize Tunisia just as they allegedly used Jews to colonize Palestine,” says Marks. “This is of course an absurd tale, but it is a tale that the Tunisian President himself has raised to the highest level.”
A few weeks after the Tunisian Nationalist Party sent its report to President Saied at the end of last year, he adopted the contents of the report in his February statement. “Every statement and every sentence contained in the president’s statement is also contained in the report of the Tunisian Nationalist Party,” says Mejri.
deportations to the desert
The President’s stance is also reflected in the way Tunisian security forces are treating the migrants: Since the beginning of the month, they have been bussing hundreds of them without legal procedures or prior notice to a remote, militarized buffer zone on the borders with Libya and Algeria. According to the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch Among the migrants concerned were pregnant women, children, as well as persons with both regular and irregular resident status.
“Dumping people in the middle of the desert without access to roads, shelter, shade, food or water is a form of state-authorized violence that runs counter to basic human rights,” Marks said. Some migrants are said to have already died at the borders with Libya and Algeria, but exact numbers are not known because they are in a very remote and difficult-to-reach area. A few hundred migrants were brought back to Tunisia by the Red Crescent.
President Saied released a statement on Facebook saying that “the migrants would be treated humanely (…) in accordance with Tunisian values” and that Tunisian security forces would protect them. He also denied photos and videos shared on social media showing migrants in distress, claiming that “colonialist circles and their agents (…) are spreading false information.”
The role of the EU
Marks says many of the migrants living in Tunisia want to leave the country as soon as possible because of the situation that is so dangerous for them. They often see only one way out: across the Mediterranean to Europe. It is often not possible for them to return to their country of origin for various reasons.
The route across the Mediterranean is life-threatening and the most dangerous escape route in the world. In the first five months of this year, 534 people died or disappeared in this attempt. And: This path is becoming increasingly difficult. Despite the many reports of human rights violations in Tunisia, the EU is continuing to cooperate with the country in the area of migration policy.
Just over the weekend, the EU and Tunisia signed a declaration of intent to restrict migration across the Mediterranean. Overall, Tunisia is to receive around 900 million euros in support from the EU. Of this, 100 million euros are intended for “border management” so that fewer migrants come from Tunisia to Italy.
The Tunisian Coast Guard is equipped and trained by the EU and individual member states such as Germany, among others. Ahlam Chemlali from the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) finds this one-sided focus of EU policy alarming: “The EU is more interested in stopping boats with migrants than in saving lives at sea and respecting human rights.”
Marks also sharply criticizes the migration agreement between the EU and Tunisia. She says that by doing so, the EU would help fund the Tunisian government’s “racist violence and brutal fascism.” “Because the EU’s top priority in Tunisia is to stop migration, no matter what Saied does.”