Police cleared two of the irregular black migrant camps in the Tunisian capital and bused residents to an unknown location.
Tunisia – Hundreds of refugees and migrants camped in central Tunis have disappeared. The group, including several young children, were reportedly abandoned in the desert near Algeria.
According to local media reports, security forces entered camps in the wealthy business district of Berge de Lac early Friday, rounding up men, women and children and destroying the shelters they had set up.
One camp was in a walled public park and the other was in an alley in front of the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM).
About 100 other refugees, mostly from Sudan, held a sit-in outside UNHCR offices 4 miles (6.6 km) away.
Several infants born in Tunisia to refugee or migrant mothers were present when Al Jazeera visited the IOM camp on Tuesday.
The Refugees in Libya organization continued to maintain contact with the missing people, who were able to communicate from the buses onto which the police had forced them.
🚨Continued mass disposal in the desert by the Tunisian authorities.
At around 3 a.m. yesterday, several police forces, including special riot control and counter-terrorism units, dispersed the protest camp in front of the UNHCR office in the Lac zone of Tunis. Hundreds of refugees and… pic.twitter.com/5uaYxDmR75
— Refugees in Libya (@RefugeesinLibya) May 3, 2024
This was canceled at around 7pm (1800 GMT) after the phone batteries failed.
According to the group’s spokesman, David Yambio, the refugees and migrants were let off the buses about five kilometers from the northwestern town of Jendouba, near the Algerian border.
“Babies and toddlers are hungry and thirsty, they told me,” he wrote via email, “the police told them nothing except beatings and insults.”
Several nationalities sought refuge in central Tunis: Chadians, Sierra Leoneans and many Sudanese.
A significant number of them held ID cards issued by the UNHCR and, although there are no asylum laws in Tunisia, still had access to basic medical care and a small stipend.
Video shared by Refugees in Libya showed police searching the camp late at night before transporting refugees and migrants, including women and young children, to the desert near Algeria.
Calls and emails to the IOM requesting details of the raid and any precautions taken to ensure people’s safety have so far remained unanswered.
Previous reports of refugees and migrants being bused to the Algerian border have often featured robberies by Tunisian gangs trying to return on foot to Tunis where they hoped to find safety.
Human rights groups have long accused Tunisia of deporting refugees and migrants to the Algerian and Libyan borders, but Tunisian authorities have consistently denied the practice, which violates international law, said the NGO Avocats Sans Frontieres (Lawyers Without Borders).
Criticism of Tunisia’s handling of the irregular black refugee and migrant population entering the country on their way to Europe is not new.
Human Rights Watch, Avocats Sans Frontieres and Amnesty International have repeatedly condemned Tunisian police and officials for their treatment of the vulnerable community.
