African migrants flee Tunisia amid racial crackdown
Several African migrants have fled racial crackdown in Tunisia, an action that flared up after a speech by President Kais Saied.
In the said statement last month, the president told security forces to expel all illegal immigrants.
President Saied in that speech called migration a conspiracy to change Tunisia’s demographics by making it more African and less Arab.
The African Union condemned his comment describing it as a “racialised hate speech”, but Saied denounced the criticism.
Tensions have been high since the police detained hundreds of migrants, with landlords summarily evicting hundreds from their homes and hundreds of others fired from work.
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Hundreds of migrants have spoken of suffering attacks including being pelted with stones by gangs of youths in their neighbourhoods.
The Tunisian leader said his crackdown on illegal migration is to fight human trafficking but opposition parties and rights groups have the crackdown was aimed at distracting from Tunisia’s economic crisis.
Already migrants from Ivory Coast, Mali and Guinea have left Tunisia. All these nationals were evacuated by their governments for their own safety.
Saied is already facing agitations from citizens who say he is becoming dictatorial.
Hundreds of opposition supporters in Tunisia defied an official ban on their protest against the president on Sunday after some of their leaders were arrested.
Source: Africafeeds.com
