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There have been violent attacks on black migrants in Tunisia 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, there have been renewed clashes between Tunisians and migrants from sub-Saharan countries in the Tunisian port city of Sfax since the beginning of the month. The Tunisian authorities blame three men from Cameroon for the Tunisian’s death. They are said to have stabbed him.
Since then, some citizens have repeatedly violently attacked migrants on the street, insulted them or forcibly expelled them from their homes. Others are trying to help and distribute 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 against migrants is reinforced by disinformation on social networks. At the end of February this year, Tunisian President Kais Saied triggered a wave of violence against migrants after he claimed in a statement that “hordes of illegal migrants” were pouring into Tunisia with the aim of “changing the country’s demographic composition.” to destroy his Arab-Muslim identity. Certain parties would receive huge sums of money for this and the migrants would bring “violence, crime and the unacceptable practices that go with them” into the country.
Figures from the National Statistics Institute According to this, only around 21,000 migrants from sub-Saharan countries lived in Tunisia in 2020 and 2021. Monica Marks, assistant professor of Middle East policy 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 a “serious distortion of reality.”
With stories about migrants like this one, Saied is trying to “conjure up false threats to Tunisia” in order to “distract people from the difficult reality in which they live,” said Marks. The economic situation in Tunisia continues to deteriorate and Saied has been increasingly restricting the political freedoms of his citizens for around two years.
“Then the situation escalated in real life”
According to Zyna Mejri, founder of the Tunisian fact-checking collective Falso, Saied’s statements have multiplied the incitement against migrants in the country. “With this statement, the president gave people the green light to be racist.” First there was agitation against migrants 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 stood up for migrants in the country and organized demonstrations and fundraisers.
Last year, Saied passed a law which criminalizes the spread of false information. People charged under this law face up to 10 years in prison. So far, this has mainly affected lawyers and journalists. No one has yet been charged with spreading false information about migrants.
Disinformation with videos from other countries
Shortly after the president’s February statement was published, Mejri’s organization Falso registered a sharp increase in misinformation about migrants on social networks. “Before, such videos only had a few thousand views and likes on TikTok, after which we saw millions of likes, shares and negative comments,” says Mejri.
The accounts Mejri is talking about share videos that supposedly show migrants in Tunisia. In some of these videos, angry crowds can be seen demonstrating, and inscriptions that were subsequently superimposed on the videos say things like “Tunisia under occupation” or “Tunisia has become the kingdom of the Africans.” In other videos, according to the accounts that distribute them, large groups of migrants can be seen making their way to Tunisia – some of them are even armed.
BBC analysis However, show that these videos were not recorded in Tunisia, but in Senegal and Sudan, among other places. They don’t show migrants in Tunisia either, but rather other events. For example, a video shows a demonstration in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. This can be recognized by a striking obelisk that can be seen in the video. The Senegalese flag can also be seen. However, many users overlook these details and believe headlines that 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 began 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 supposedly used Jews to colonize Palestine,” Marks says. “This is of course an absurd narrative, but it is a narrative that the Tunisian president himself has taken 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 attitude is also reflected in how the Tunisian security forces deal with the migrants: Since the beginning of the month, they have deported hundreds of them on buses to a remote, militarized buffer zone on the borders with Libya and Algeria, without legal procedures or prior notice. According to the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch The affected migrants included pregnant women, children and people with both regular and irregular residence 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 died at the borders with Libya and Algeria, but exact numbers are not known because they are in a very remote and difficult to access zone. Several hundred migrants were brought back to Tunisia by the Red Crescent.
President Saied published a statement on Facebook in which he said that “the migrants would receive humane treatment (…) in accordance with Tunisian values” and that the Tunisian security forces would protect them. He also denied the photos and videos shared on social networks showing migrants in emergency situations and claimed 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 quickly as possible because the situation is so dangerous for them. They often see only one way out: via the Mediterranean to Europe. Because 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 continues to cooperate with the country in the area of migration policy.
Just this weekend, the EU and Tunisia signed a declaration of intent to restrict migration across the Mediterranean. In total, Tunisia is expected 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, among others, by the EU and individual member states such as Germany. 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 carrying migrants than saving lives at sea and respecting human rights.”
Marks also sharply criticizes the migration agreement between the EU and Tunisia. She says the EU would thereby partly finance “the racist violence and brutal fascism” of the Tunisian government. “Because the EU’s top priority in Tunisia is to stop migration, no matter what Saied does.”