The regional government in Medenine in south-east Tunisia says that a total of 90 bodies have now been recovered after a boat carrying migrants from Mali, the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Egypt and Gambia sank off the nearby Libyan coast on July 1st 2019. Pregnant women and children were among the victims, according to survivors.
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For the Tunisian authorities this is neither the first nor likely to be the last such tragedy off its shores. A week after the drownings at the start of July, the Tunisian navy intervened to save migrants from another boat, off Sfax. Since 2011 more than a thousand migrants have been buried in the coastal town of Zarzis, according to Tunisia's social and economic rights forum the Forum Tunisien pour les Droits Économiques et Sociaux (FTDES).
This latest shipwreck, however, has brought the issue to greater prominence, highlighting both the responsibility of European countries and the timidity of the Tunisian authorities. Thanks to a lack of resources, debates over the burying of victims and overcrowding in reception centres for the survivors, Tunisia is finding it harder and harder to cope with the flow of migrants onto its territory.
After a row between various towns in the south of the country – some refused to get involved at all – it was the council in Zarzis which has now ended up burying the corpses that no one wanted after this latest tragedy. Under Tunisian law only municipal authorities are authorized to carry out burials. “We've had instances of dead migrants, brought in by sea currents, since the 1990s,” says the deputy mayor of Zarzis, Faouzi Khenissi. “Up till now we've buried them in Tunisian cemeteries. But the number was a lot lower than it is today.”
Finally, in 2003, a dedicated cemetery for migrants was created but that now is full. More than 900 bodies have been buried there, including 18 on Saturday July 13th. “We've buried 56 other bodies in the new cemetery given by the Red Crescent in the commune,” added the deputy mayor.
The situation is becoming more and more difficult, he says, because the town simply does not have the resources to cope. Tired and overworked, the town's officials talk freely about the problem and are already planning for what they will do if there is a new maritime tragedy.
“We've been criticised in the media for using rubbish lorries to transport the bodies. Would you believe, we've got nothing else? We did clean them. What would help would be to have more equipment, as well as a unit with a medical examiner at Zarzis rather than having to make a 300 kilometre round trip to Gabès [editor's note, further to the north on the Tunisian coast],” said Faouzi Khenissi.
As for looking after the three survivors from the latest tragedy, this is being done in centres which, according to representatives from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), are already at full capacity.
Several days before the July 1st tragedy, the governor of the Medenine governorate in south-east Tunisia and Tunisia's head of government Youssef Chahed had already raised the alarm about the problems the south of the country faced in handling the flow of migrants, which has risen both on land and by sea.
“The number of migrants and asylum seekers has increased a lot since the end of 2018,” said France Lau, a UNHCR representation in Tunisia. “Even if the Tunisian authorities were prepared for an influx of people coming from Libya - we asked them to put in place mechanisms for an emergency response in a case of a massive number of arrivals, as in 2011 – it's absolutely legitimate for them to raise the alarm about the problems they might have to manage these new arrivals.”
Researcher Valentina Zagaria, who has written a thesis on migration in south-east Tunisia, said: “The Italian policies, which are closing ports to migrants, and the European support for Libyan militia who round up and lock up migrants in Libya in appalling conditions, mean that increasingly Tunisia is the only way out for many of them, but not really the place where they want to stay.”
However, as well as suffering from a lack of resources, Tunisia has also made a political decision in relation to migrants. The head of the Tunisian government, Youssef Chahed, has made it very clear on several occasions: he does not want Tunisia to become a “reception centre” for people who wanted to migrate to Europe. Moreover, the country has no law on seeking asylum, and under its mandate only the UNHCR is able to grant the status of refugee in Tunisia.
Even the setting up of six migrant centres – divided between the UNHCR and the IOM – has taken a long time in the Medenine governorate. Apart from the UNHCR centre established in 2013 after the dismantling of the camp at Choucha – which itself had been created to deal with the influx of people fleeing Libya in 2011 – the setting up of the other five centres has involved lengthy negotiations with local people and authorities. Some centres have also had to be moved.
“It's difficult day to day because there's racism, and rumours put around about the diseases brought in by the migrants,” said Khaled Sadaani, the southern coordinator for the Tunisian council for refugees, a non-governmental organisation set up in 2016 in response to the absence of a local association for refugees. “You have to manage both the prejudices and the protection for these groups who arrive in Tunisia and who are in a vulnerable situation.”
All 170 places at the UNHCR-supervised centre in Medenine are filled. The migrants there have come from many different countries, from both West Africa and East Africa, but the great majority are Eritrean. One floor of the centre is set aside for the thirty or so unaccompanied minors – aged between 15 and 18 – another is for women and children, and another for men.
The different nationalities live side by side peacefully but many of them do not regard Tunisia as their final destination, even though the chances of them being taken in by a third country are very limited. “There's no work here, we are offered 20 dinars a day [editor's note, about 6 euros] to work on building sites, I don't see how I can support my family's needs on that,” said Fayçal, aged 24, an asylum seeker from Sudan.
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The migrant routes that the young man took just to reach Tunisia were convoluted. From South Sudan he went to Egypt via the desert in Niger and the town of Agadez, the passage point between sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa, and then on to Libya where he was imprisoned several times.
“I've been on the move for two years now, looking for work,” said Fayçal. “On one occasion Egypt expelled me to Sudan and I had to redo the entire trip. Each time a member of my family helped me because I'm the only one who can feed my brothers and my mother. They're currently in a camp for people who've been displaced by the war. I'm exhausted,” added Fayçal, who had lived in a one-storey house in Juba in South Sudan.
While imprisoned in Libyan he and his cellmates had to avoid getting raped by a Libyan guard. “When we'd escaped from prison again the guard was afraid that we'd reveal his sexual preferences... so he helped us by giving us 50 Libyan dinars [24 euros] and by showing us the way to the Tunisian border. He told us: 'Walk straight ahead and you'll get there',” said Fayçal.
Land of welcome, land of mourning
Like many migrants, Fayçal is waiting to hear the result of his request for asylum in Tunisia. Half of the migrants in Zarzis choose to apply for asylum, the others prefer not to, fearing they might have to remain in the country.
“It's difficult for them to accept the fact that being resettled [in a third country] is an option limited to a small number of refugees in relation to the overall needs, and which is subject to well-defined criteria,” said France Lau of UNHCR.
On the ground some Tunisian associations are trying to launch some micro-projects and to help find contracts for those who want to work during this interim period. “Many manage to find short-term contracts in the tourism industry in Djerba,” said Yahia Rebai, a local administrator for the UNHCR. “It's still temporary but for some years there's been strong cooperation with the local associations and even child protection representatives to support and protect minors.”
Even so, the UNHCR and IOM centres are on the edge of the town, away from local inhabitants. And many of the migrants in them say they do not venture far, other than for work or to buy food. Only a few of them have begun to find apartments in the town itself.
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Overall, it is difficult at the moment to talk in terms of an policy of integration in Tunisian society. For while the trade union organisation UGTT has provided some facilities for migrants in the capital Tunis and the city of Sousse since 2018, in the form of special days where sub-Saharan workers can find out more about their rights and regularise their situation, there is little real political acknowledgement of migrants in Tunisia.
“Acknowledging the rights of the living as well as the dead on Tunisian soil would be sending a signal of acceptance to the European authorities,” said researcher Valentina Zagaria. “The Tunisians want to avoid that, they don't want to be forced to be more involved in the management of European borders. So for the time being those who manage to escape from Libya remain in an uncertain situation.”
For its part, the European Union delegation in Tunisia prefers to present its programmes as supporting the fight against illegal immigration and helping voluntary repatriation. And it is very cautious about what it says.
“In an interdependent world, responsibilities are also shared and interdependent,” the EU delegation's Head of Cooperation in Tunisia Sophie Vanhaeverbeke said in an email. “What happens in Sudan has repercussions in Tunisia and in Europe and vice versa. The EU is following the situation closely and understands the concern of the Tunisian authorities. It will study any potential solution, at Tunisia's request.”
Meanwhile Tunisia, which has become both a land of welcome and a land of mourning, looks upon the conflict in neighbouring Libya with apprehension. Since the start of 2019 more than 1,000 people have arrived from that country. But according to figures compiled as part of contingency plans drawn up by the UNHCR and IOM, this figure could rise to 25,000 if the conflict in Libya worsens.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter