📋 Tender Overview
Since July 2 2023 Tunisian security forces have collectively expelled several hundred black African migrants and asylum seekers including children and pregnant women to a militarized buffer zone on the border between Tunisia and Tunisia . Libya Human Rights Watch said today. Among these people expelled without any respect for legal procedures some lived in Tunisia in a regular situation others in an irregular situation. Many of them reported violence from the authorities during their arrest or deportation.The Tunisian government must end collective expulsions and urgently allow humanitarian access to African migrants and asylum seekers already deported to a dangerous area on the border between Tunisia and Libya with little food and no medical assistance said Lauren Seibert researcher in the Refugee and Migrant Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. Not only is it unacceptable to mistreat people and abandon them in the desert but collective expulsions are also contrary to international law. Between July 2 and July 6 Human Rights Watch interviewed by telephone five people who had been deported including an Ivorian asylum seeker and four migrants two Ivorians a Cameroonian and a 16-year-old Cameroonian girl. The interviewees are not named in order to protect them. They could not give an exact number but according to their estimates since July 2 Tunisian authorities have deported between 500 and 700 people to the border area about 35 kilometers east of the town of Ben Guerdane . . The migrants arrived in at least four different groups varying in size.According to those interviewed the deportees were of different African nationalitiesIvorian Cameroonian Malian Guinean Chadian Sudanese Senegalese and othersincluding at least 29 children and three pregnant women. At least six of those deported were asylum seekers registered with the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR while at least two had consular cards identifying them as refugees. students in Tunisia.Those interviewed said they had been arrested during raids by the police the national guard or the army in Sfax a port city located southeast of Tunis as well as in its surroundings. National guard and military forces quickly took them to Ben Guerdane then to the Libyan border more than 300km south of Sfax where they were trapped in what they described as a buffer zone from where it was impossible for them to enter Libya or return to Tunisia.Tensions have been high in Sfax for months Tunisian residents have campaigned for African foreigners to leave which has recently led to attacks on black Africans and clashes with Tunisians. A Beninese was killed in May and a Tunisian on July 3. Videos circulating on social media in early July showed groups of Tunisian men threatening black Africans with batons and knives other videos of members of the security forces pushing black Africans into pick-up trucks to cheers from the population.Interviewees said Tunisian security forces destroyed almost all of their phones before the eviction. They mainly communicated with Human Rights Watch through a phone that a man had managed to hide. They provided their GPS location on July 2 and July 4 along with videos and photos showing broken phones evictees and their injuries apparently from beatings by security forces as well as passports consular cards and asylum seeker cards.Interviewees said that between July 2 and July 5 several people died or were killed in the border area some being shot and others beaten by Tunisian soldiers or members of the National Guard. They also said that Libyans with machetes or other weapons robbed some people and raped several women either in the buffer zone or after these women managed to enter Libya to look for food. No nongovernmental organizations had access to the area so Human Rights Watch could not independently confirm these accounts.A video sent by migrants to Human Rights Watch shows a woman describing a sexual assault allegedly committed by Tunisian security forces. In another video a woman says she had a miscarriage after being deported.We are on the border between Tunisia and Libya by the sea said an Ivorian asylum seeker on July 4. We have been beaten by the Tunisian security forces ... We have many wounded here ... We have children who have not eaten for days ... who are forced to drink sea water. We had a Guinean pregnant woman who had gone into labor ... she died this morning ... the baby died too.When the deportations began on the morning of July 2 a group of 20 people were dropped off at the border. Human Rights Watch interviewed two people from this group a 29-year-old Ivorian and a 16-year-old Cameroonian.The man said that on July 1 members of the police national guard and army raided the house where they were staying in Jbeniana 35 kilometers north of Sfax and arrested 48 people. He added that the detainees had entered Tunisia at different times some legal and some not but to his knowledge none had passed through Libya. Tunisian authorities took the 48 people to a police station reviewed their documents and recorded their information. The security forces separated them into two groups and took the group of the man we interviewed to Ben Guerdane.He explained that they had stopped at three bases in Ben Guerdane and that soldiers or agents of the National Guard had beaten them like animals ... by punching them kicking slapping beating and that they had harassed and sexually assaulted the women in particular by indulging in touching. They started touching me everywhere said the young Cameroonian from the same group. They hit my head against their vehicle.
