Tag: Migrants

Timeline of how migrant boat tragedy off the coast of Greece unfolded

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A timeline of events that led up to one of the worst shipwrecks in recent Mediterranean history as hundreds of migrants are still missing off the coast of Greece.

Some 200 people in the Greek port city of Piraeus marched to the offices of European border agency FRONTEX and the Hellenic Guard on Sunday, protesting their handling of last week’s deadly shipwreck off the coast of Pylos. 

There are mounting questions as to whether the Greek coastguard should have intervened earlier to help get the migrants onboard to safety.

There are still more questions than answers about what led up to one of the worst shipwrecks in recent Mediterranean history. Critics say the Greek coastguard and Frontex should have intervened earlier

Up to 750 men, women and children from Syria, Egypt, the Palestinian territories and Pakistan were on board the vessel trying to reach Europe when it sank.

Below is a timeline of events based on reports from Greek authorities, a commercial ship, and activists who said they were in touch with passengers. They describe sequences of events that at times converge, but also differ in key ways.

All times are given in Greece’s time zone.

Around 11 am on Tuesday

Italian authorities informed Greece that a fishing trawler packed with migrants was in international waters southwest of the Peloponnese. Greece said the Italian authorities were alerted by an activist.

Around the same time, human rights activist Nawal Soufi wrote on social media that she had been contacted by a woman on a boat that had left Libya four days earlier.

The migrants had run out of water, Soufi wrote and shared GPS coordinates through a satellite phone showing they were approximately 100 kilometres from Greece.

Over the course of the day, Soufi described some 20 calls with people on the trawler in a series of social media posts and a later audio recording. 

11:47 am

A surveillance aircraft from the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, commonly known as Frontex, spotted the overcrowded trawler and notified Greek authorities. On Saturday, Frontex said that its plane had to leave the scene after 10 minutes because of a fuel shortage, but that it had also shared details and photos of the “heavily overcrowded” trawler with Greece.

2 pm

Greek authorities established contact with someone on the trawler. The vessel “did not request any assistance from the coast guard or from Greece,” according to a statement.

But activists said that people on the boat were already in desperate need by Tuesday afternoon.

3:11 pm

Soufi wrote on social media that passengers told her that seven people were unconscious.

Around the same time, Alarm Phone, a network of activists said they received a call from a person on the trawler.

“They say they cannot survive the night, that they are in heavy distress,” Alarm Phone wrote.

3:35 pm

A Greek coast guard helicopter located the trawler. An aerial photo released showed that it was packed, with people covering nearly the entire deck.

From then until 9 pm, Greek authorities said, they were in contact with people on the trawler by satellite phone, radio, and shouted conversations conducted by merchant vessels and a coast guard boat that arrived at night. They added that people on the trawler repeatedly said they wanted to continue to Italy and refused rescue.

5:10 pm

Greek authorities asked a Maltese-flagged tanker called the Lucky Sailor to bring the trawler food and water.

According to the company that manages the Lucky Sailor, people on the trawler “were very hesitant to receive any assistance,” and shouted that “they want to go to Italy.” Eventually, the trawler was persuaded to accept supplies, Eastern Mediterranean Maritime Ltd. wrote in a statement. 

Around 6 pm

A Greek coast guard helicopter reported that the trawler was “sailing on a steady course and heading.”

6:20 pm

Alarm Phone said that people on board reported that they weren’t moving and that the “captain” had abandoned the trawler in a small boat.

“Please any solution,” someone on board told Alarm Phone.

The Greek authorities’ account suggested the trawler stopped around that time to receive supplies from the Lucky Sailor.

6:55 pm

Soufi wrote that migrants on board told her that six people had died and another two were very sick. No other account so far has mentioned deaths prior to the shipwreck. 

Around 9 pm

Greek authorities asked a second, Greek-flagged, merchant vessel to deliver water, and allowed the Lucky Sailor to leave.

Around 10:40 pm

A coast guard boat from Crete reached the trawler and remained nearby until it sank. According to the coast guard, the vessel “discreetly observed” the trawler from a distance. Once again, the coast guard said, the trawler didn’t appear to have any problems and was moving “at a steady course and speed.”

According to Soufi, attempts to deliver supplies may have contributed to the trawler’s troubles.

Around 11 pm

Soufi wrote that the trawler began rocking as its passengers tried to catch water bottles from another vessel. According to people on board, ropes were tied to the ship, destabilising it and causing a “state of panic,” she said.

The report from the Lucky Sailor said that no lines were tied to the trawler, and supplies were delivered in watertight barrels tied to a rope.

“Those on board the boat caught the line and pulled,” the company managing the Lucky Sailor said. 

The Greek coast guard said that its vessel had briefly attached a light rope to the trawler. A spokesperson stressed that none of the vessels had attempted to tow the trawler.

Commander Nikos Alexiou told Greek channel Ant1 TV that the coast guard wanted to check on the trawler’s condition, but people on board again refused help and untied the rope before continuing the course.

Soufi’s last contact with the trawler was at 11 pm. She said later in a voice memo that “they never expressed the will to continue sailing to Italy,” or refused assistance from Greece. “They were in danger and needed help.”

The captain of the coast guard vessel that reached the trawler less than three hours before it sank has testified to investigating authorities that the passengers refused any help. 

11:40 pm

The captain said that during the first approach, the passengers didn’t respond to his call and that he was ready to provide assistance.

Five minutes later, he said, the vessel stopped moving. His vessel inched closer and tied a rope to the ship’s bow but some passengers responded in English “No Help” and “Go Italy,” according to the news website kathimerini.gr which quotes from the captain’s deposition. Soon after, the migrants untied the rope and restarted the engine.

1:40 am Wednesday

According to authorities, the trawler kept moving until Wednesday morning when its engine stopped. The coast guard vessel then got closer to “determine the problem.”

A few minutes later, Alarm Phone had a final exchange with people on the trawler. The activists were able to make out only: “Hello my friend … The ship you send is …” before the call cut off.

In the Greek captain’s leaked testimony, he said that he was informed that the trawler’s engine had stopped again. The coast guard vessel then approached within 70 metres of the boat for an inspection. 

2:04 am

More than 15 hours after Greek authorities first heard of the case, the coast guard reported that the trawler began rocking violently from side to side, and then capsised.

People on deck were thrown into the sea, while others held onto the boat as it flipped. Many others, including women and children, were trapped below deck.

Fifteen minutes later, the trawler vanished underwater.

In the darkness of night, 104 people were rescued and brought to shore on the Mayan Queen IV, a luxury yacht that was sailing in the vicinity of the shipwreck. Greek authorities retrieved 78 bodies. No other people have been found since Wednesday.

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Viral TikTok video causes Italy to reckon with racism

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A “culture of impunity” towards discrimination and the country’s failure to come to terms with its colonial past has fuelled racism, say experts.

Mahnoor Euceph was travelling on a train in Italy’s Milan when she suddenly noticed a group of women making fun of her boyfriend and his mother.

The American tourist filmed the incident on her phone and then published it on TikTok, where the clip soon went viral. 

“I was on the train from Lake Como to Milan on April 16th with my half-Chinese boyfriend, his Chinese mom, and his white dad. I am Pakistani. We are all American,” she wrote on the social media platform.

“I noticed these girls sitting across from us staring me down and laughing and speaking Italian. At first, I ignored it. Then I stared back at them,” she continued. 

Euceph says she then took a nap but when she woke up, the women had not stopped staring. 

“I asked them, ‘Is there a problem?’ They said, ‘No, there isn’t a problem’. At that point, they started saying ‘Ni hao (hello in Mandarin)!’ in an obnoxious, racist, loud voice, along with other things in Italian I couldn’t understand.”

Euceph said their taunts grew more aggressive until she took her phone and started filming. After that they slightly toned it down. 

“Never in my life have I experienced such blatant racism. My boyfriend said the same thing,” she wrote, adding other Asian friends had reached out to her, sharing similar experiences of racism in Italy and Europe.

The video has fuelled an ongoing national conversation on racism within Italy, with its society becoming increasingly multicultural in recent years, especially in the biggest cities.

How common are episodes of racism in Italy?

Episodes of racism are quite common in Italy, often sparking widespread public condemnation in their aftermath.

In February, during a popular music contest, volleyball player Paola Egonu, who was born in Italy to Nigerian parents, said the country is racist, “but it’s getting better“.

Only a few weeks ago, her optimism wasn’t shared by French former professional footballer Lilian Thuram, who told Italian TV channel La7 Italy is “much more racist than it used to be before this government was in power.” 

Thuram was talking about Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing coalition government, which won last year’s election.

Only last week, Turin filed 171 restraining orders against Juventus fans after they subjected rival football player Romelu Lukaku to racist chants.

However, the Italian government does not collect statistics about race and ethnicity, meaning there is less data on racism compared to other European countries. 

In 2021, some 60% of young people in Italy admitted to having some unconscious racist bias, as shown by a UNICEF poll. The survey also found that 74% of migrants interviewed by the agency reported had been subject to discrimination in Italy.

“There is a stronger awareness among recently settled communities and migrant communities about the growth, in the past two years, of episodes of daily racism,” Francesco Strazzari, professor in International Relations at the Pisa-based Scuola Universitaria Superiore Sant’Anna, told Euronews. 

These incidents can be subtle, like a person subtly clutching their bag when they see a Black or Brown person entering a shop, or evident verbal and physical abuse.

“There have been recent episodes of totally gratuitous violence by far-right groups that intimidated migrants, and episodes of apparently unrelated street violence which still targeted migrants,” Strazzari said. 

“There was a case in Rome of a Roma mother carrying a baby, and the baby was harmed by someone passing by and shooting. And in these cases, it’s hard to clearly determine whether it’s a racist act or not.”

According to Strazzari, a culture of impunity has developed alongside recent racist episodes in Italy. 

There is racism that comes in the form of “public behaviour which hides behind mass behaviour or anonymity,” he said. 

The racist chant of Juventus fans against Lukaku is one example, while social media is flooded with “cynical comments written under a false name” every time a migrant boat sinks in the Mediterranean, he adds.

“These are… very widespread or common forms of racism that you see in Italy, which are not sanctioned in any way,” Strazzari said. “And this culture of impunity, I think, legitimates the fact that there are more intangible forms in daily life which escape the attention of the daily citizen, but shift the attention of those who experience them.”

One of the three women in Euceph’s video later reached out saying the situation had been misunderstood and their behaviour wasn’t racist. 

She apologised to her and her family, though the American tourist called it an attempt to manipulate the situation.

The ghost of Italy’s colonial past

Strazzari thinks Italy’s complex past and its official approach to history and identity impact debates around racism, as well as people’s attitudes. 

“Italy remains a country with a colonial past which was never properly addressed,” he said.

One of the worst massacres of the colonial period was committed by Italians in Ethiopia in February 1937, when an estimated 19,000 locals were murdered in what’s known as the Addis Ababa massacre. 

Italian forces in the East African country committed what would now be considered war crimes, including using chemical weapons. 

“Italy never formally apologised,” Strazzari said. “It’s important because Meloni visited Ethiopia recently.”

He pointed out that Rome had tried to reconcile with Ethiopia by returning the Obelisk of Axum, which was taken in 1937. 

While Italy’s President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro expressed displeasure and sorrow for the crimes perpetrated in Ethiopia during the war in 1997, there was never a formal apology.

The roots of racism in Italy are to be found in this unresolved past, Strazzari said. 

While Germany went through a process of scrutinising its history, values and identity after World War II, Italy “despite being another loser of the war, never had this kind of reckoning,” he said. 

“In Italy, there’s the beloved cliché that Italians are always ‘brava gente’ (good people) – who even during World War II or colonial times, were always animated by a sense of empathy.”

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Sudan’s two warring generals agree to seven-day truce ‘in principle’

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Warring generals in Sudan have agreed “in principle” to a seven-day ceasefire, the government of neighbouring South Sudan said Tuesday, after regional envoys denounced repeated violations of previous truces.

Diplomatic efforts have intensified to end more than two weeks of war in Africa‘s third-largest country as warnings multiply about a “catastrophic” humanitarian crisis.

More than 430,000 people have already been forced to flee their homes, the United Nations said.

Hundreds of others have been killed and thousands wounded. 

Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy turned rival, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), “have agreed in principle for a seven-day truce from May 4th to 11th,” the South Sudanese foreign ministry in Juba said in a statement.

 


 

Multiple truces agreed since fighting began on April 15 have been repeatedly violated, including one announced by South Sudan early in the war.

Witnesses reported renewed air strikes and anti-aircraft fire in Khartoum on Tuesday.

The repeated violations sparked criticism earlier Tuesday at a meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, of the Extended Mechanism on the Sudan Crisis which brought together African, Arab, UN and other representatives.

The two generals have agreed to truces – the latest one on Sunday – yet “continue fighting and shelling the city”, said Ismail Wais, of the northeast African bloc IGAD which includes Sudan and South Sudan.

‘No longer safe’

“Our priority today is to have the ceasefire prolonged and respected, then to ensure humanitarian assistance,” African Union Commission chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat said, opening the meeting.

The later agreement of the week-long truce came in a phone conversation South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir had with the warring parties as part of IGAD’s initiative for a pause in fighting, Juba’s foreign ministry said.

“We’ll have to see whether this is accepted by all the parties and whether it’s implemented by the forces on the ground,” said Farhan Haq, the UN chief’s deputy spokesman.

Kenyan President William Ruto said earlier that the conflict had reached “catastrophic levels” and finding ways to provide humanitarian relief “with or without a ceasefire” was imperative.

The UN refugee agency said more than 100,000 people were estimated to have fled to Sudan’s neighbours.

Despite the dire humanitarian needs, on Tuesday the UN said its 2023 aid appeal for Sudan was $1.5 billion short.

But some relief has been arriving in the country.


© france24

 

After the World Health Organization (WHO) shipped in six containers of medical equipment, including supplies for treating trauma injuries, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Tuesday said it delivered 10 tonnes of supplies to a hospital in Khartoum as teams prepared to “launch emergency response activities.”

Only 16 percent of Khartoum’s hospitals are now fully functional, according to the UN.

A Sudanese physician, Howida Elhassan, posted a social media video of medical staff struggling to cope with a surge of wounded civilians at a hospital in Khartoum’s East Nile neighbourhood.

Blood appeared to stain the floor of the crowded facility where patients, one who seemed to grimace in pain with blood on his shirt, lay or sat on cots.

“On days when there are battles in the area, we receive between 30 to 40 injured people,” in addition to regular cases, Elhassan said. “Other medical staff cannot reach us because roads are no longer safe. We are understaffed and lack equipment.”

In addition to the more than 500 killed in the fighting, 250 are estimated to be missing, said a spokesman for the Mafqud (Missing) online project.

Munira Edwin turned to the project when her brother Babiker disappeared on the first day of fighting. Mafqud called her back nearly two weeks later.

“He had been found dead with two bullets” in his body, she said, struggling to hold back tears.

It was too late on Monday, as well, for the victim who several men carried into a Khartoum hospital, covered in a grey cloth after a van was riddled with bullets. The back seat was soaked in blood. Luggage rested on the roof, as if the passengers had been trying to flee.

At risk of getting caught in the crossfire, some civilians still venture out. Long queues formed Tuesday at petrol stations offering the scarce commodity, as well as at banks and ATMs.

Ahead of the South Sudanese announcement, UN head of mission Volker Perthes said discussions involving Saudi and US mediators were underway with the rival generals to firm up a truce.

Burhan’s envoy, Dafaallah al-Haj, was in Cairo where he met senior Egyptian and Arab League officials.

Haj told a press conference that he hoped the Arab League, African Union, Saudi Arabia and the US could play a role in such talks toward a more lasting truce.

While diplomats try to stop the fighting, foreign governments have scrambled to evacuate their citizens, thousands of whom have been brought to safety by air or sea in operations that are now winding down.

Darfur exodus

Russia’s armed forces said on Tuesday they were evacuating more than 200 people from Sudan on four military transport planes.

Saudi Arabia said it transported another 220 people to Jeddah.

Beyond Khartoum, lawlessness has engulfed the Darfur region from where more than 70 percent of the 330,000 people displaced inside Sudan by the fighting have fled, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Darfur is still scarred by a war that erupted in 2003 when then-strongman Omar al-Bashir unleashed the Janjaweed militia, mainly recruited from Arab pastoralist tribes, against ethnic minority rebels.The Janjaweed – whose actions led to war crimes charges against Bashir and others – later evolved into the RSF.

(AFP)



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World population hits 8 billion: What does it mean for us?

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The global population reached 8 billion on 15 November 2022, according to the United Nations’ World Population Prospects 2022 report. 

This milestone presents both huge opportunities, but also considerable challenges for humankind. 

“[It] is an occasion to celebrate diversity and advancements while considering humanity’s shared responsibility for the planet,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

In our latest episode of the Global Conversation, with the help of Friends of Europe, Euronews sat down with the United Nations Population Fund Executive Director, Natalia Kanem, and the European Commission Vice President for Democracy and Demography, Dubravka Šuica to discuss what this all means for us.

Isabel da Silva, Euronews: The United Nations Population Fund has just published the State of the World Population Report. India overtook China as the country with the largest population. It will keep growing very fast. I would like to ask Madam Executive Director, which are the other findings that would you would like to highlight? 

Natalia Kanem, United Nations Population Fund Executive Director: “There are two things that I’ll say. One is the world population is reordering itself. We’re living in a period where there’s so much diversity. Some countries have a mean age of 50, others a mean age of 15. But my real point is that everywhere there seem to be these alarm bells going off. [The] world population [is] too big, [or] too small. Women will make their own decisions and we should support them in the fertility that they wish to have.”

Isabel da Silva, Euronews: Madam Vice-President, the European Union has only 6% of the world population and faces a declining trend, which will have a huge impact in terms of financing welfare and the pension system. Considering that the French population is so angrily reacting to reforms in these fields, what are the solutions?

Dubravka Šuica, European Commission Vice-President for Democracy and Demography: “There are different ways to find a solution, as you said. [The] first one is that we want to use our cohesion policy in the best possible way, in order to create an environment for families to thrive. Then, I have to mention artificial intelligence and robotics, which is very important and can sometimes replace humans. But I don’t say that this is the only solution. And the third one is managing legal migration.

Isabel da Silva, Euronews: How can we integrate migrants in a way that is positive for them and for our societies?

**Dubravka Šuica, European Commission Vice-President for Democracy and Demography: “**I think that solidarity is of utmost importance and we have to push for it. And I think that Europe is based on solidarity. So, we have to do more on this, prepare them (migrants) to integrate better when they come, [be it] with learning languages or different skills. Reskilling, upskilling. You know that we are now in the European Year of Skills and for the two transitions, digital and green, there are new jobs and it’s very important to have skilled people for new jobs, for new green jobs. So, this is something which should be done in advance before they come to our member states.”

Isabel da Silva, Euronews: How can we explain this anxiety about the fact that we are now 8 billion?

Natalia Kanem, United Nations Population Fund Executive Director:  “The population dynamics of the moment is a world of great movement. And when we look at the dynamics of what creates that movement, we see that there’s one axis of conflict and people feeling that their microcosm is unsafe. 

“Now climate is another push for people to leave where they are and seek a better life elsewhere. So, we need to look for climate solutions, and we also need to put peace at the centre. 

“The other piece of it is that this is the first time in human history when there’s so much divergence. In fact, two-thirds of us live in places where the population will decline looking towards the year 2050. But there’s still one-third of us in places where the population is growing very rapidly. There are a lot of women in developing country settings who still cannot get contraception.”

Isabel da Silva, Euronews: European women face, obviously, different challenges, but there’s still some discrimination in terms of access to the job market, in terms of wages. They also make up for, I would say, 90% of the workforce for health and social care. When we talk about women’s empowerment and respecting their rights, what is missing?

Dubravka Šuica, European Commission Vice-President for Democracy and Demography:                “The Gender issue is a big issue in [the] European Union and we have to deal with it. Eight million European women don’t work at all, although they have their careers, they have their CVs, but they can’t work because they cannot afford either kindergarten or nursery home, for either their parents or for their kids. So we lack 8 million European women in our labour market because of this. We have to take care about the infrastructure, we have to care about this profession of caregiver, which, I must say, should be better respected, and should be better paid, because this profession is undervalued and we have to take care of this.”

Isabel da Silva, Euronews: But I would say that, maybe, other groups are also still overlooked. I would say people with disability and people with other issues. Even among elderly people who still want to be active in work, they find it hard to find a job or be able to contribute. Does there also have to be a mindset change?

Natalia Kanem, United Nations Population Fund Executive Director: “Exactly. And that is the point about the 8 billion and the infinite possibilities. If we ask the right questions, your imagination takes you to solutions that are workable. And putting people’s desires, what they want, at the centre has to be part of this equation. 

“I also feel that it’s a time of great change in technology. It’s a time of great possibility to be able to use new methodologies that we have to invent. As you said, how can an older person, who can actively contribute, be in a situation that structures for their talents and their capacities? But most of all, I think it’s really important to look at the young generation’s desire to put the planet first, to connect all those dots across the Sustainable Development Goals, planet and future. So, this means that we have to plan more intelligently and ask better questions.

Isabel da Silva, Euronews: My last question is: will this vision also be a solution for the socially and economically depressed regions in Europe? You know, there’s a lot of dynamics in the urban areas, but a lot of rural areas in many European Union countries are getting very depressed in all sorts of ways.

Dubravka Šuica, European Commission Vice-President for Democracy and Demography: “This is something which our president, von der Leyen, wanted to have in the treaties: Intergenerational solidarity because we think it is important. Without that, our societies won’t be fair, won’t be equal. 

“When we talk about rural versus urban, this is a big issue. 80% of Europe is geographically covered by rural areas and only one-third of our population lives there, which means there is huge potential in villages in the countryside, in rural areas. They are trying to invest and cover rural areas with 5G, with broadband, and internet. Without broadband internet, you can’t imagine future jobs. And this is the reason why digital skills are very important nowadays. When you mention older people, they have to be skilful enough, so we are promoting lifelong learning in order to make older people capable of coping with the new technologies and with new styles of life.”

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How does Frontex get away with ‘plain murder’?

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The UK government’s recent plan to bar asylum seekers who enter the country illegally, such as by crossing the Channel, sparked an international backlash. 

Among the most outraged were the European Union’s top officials, with European Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson warning Britain its new policy violates international law.

But as the EU points the finger at the UK’s anti-migrant policies, others are pointing the finger back at Europe – especially its powerful and controversial border agency, Frontex.

Created in 2004, a good decade before the so-called 2015 European migrant crisis, the Warsaw-based border agency was tasked with the role of protecting the EU borders, plus fighting human trafficking, smuggling and other cross-border crimes. 

Among these, of course, was illegal migration.

But increasingly, Frontex’s role at the borders of Europe has become murkier and more hotly contested. 

With thousands of people escaping poverty, hunger, war, domestic abuse, and persecution piling up at the doors of what has been dubbed ‘Fortress Europe’, Frontex stands accused of violating human rights, intimidating migrants and abusing power.

Last spring, in the wake of an EU investigation that alleged Frontex staff had covered-up human rights violations in EU member states, director Fabrice Leggeri and two other high-ranking officials resigned. 

However, Frontex still shuns responsibility. No fundamental action has been taken to reform the agency, one of the best-funded within the entire bloc with a budget of €754 million, as per 2022 data.

What is Frontex accused of?

Omer Shatz – lawyer, human rights activist and legal affairs director of NGO front-Lex – could detail a long list of how Frontex has violated European law, human rights, maritime law and its own guidelines in recent years. 

Yet, to simplify things, he breaks the list into just three examples.

One: Frontex has provided the location of migrants and refugees who were intercepted at sea and forcibly transferred to migrant camps in Libya, where “crimes against humanity are taking place”, according to Shatz. 

“We are looking at about more than 150,000 civilians since 2016 — including thousands of children — that were abducted and possibly transferred to Libyan camps where they were systematically raped, tortured and enslaved,” he told Euronews.

“And this is Frontex that is orchestrating these policies, in the sense that without Frontex providing the coordinates and the geo-localisation of the migrant boats in the Central Mediterranean in international waters, the militias that Frontex is collaborating with would not have found them, ever.”

In December, Human Rights Watch and Border Forensics published evidence of Frontex’s involvement in the interception and transfer of thousands of migrants to Libya. They accused it of alerting the Libyan coast guard, instead of search and rescue units. 

Two: Frontex is supposedly responsible for what Shatz calls “killing by omission” policies in the Mediterranean.

“Frontex… intentionally withdrew its assets from critical areas where asylum seekers are likely to be in distress,” Shatz said. “Removing the assets, changing the mandate of these Frontex operations was made intentionally to increase death rates [in the Central Mediterranean], thinking that this would deter migrants from making the trip.”

Almost 25,000 people have died in the Mediterranean since 2014, according to Human Rights Watch. 

“We are talking about mass drowning, mass killing of people,” Shatz said. “This is unprecedented. It’s not the enemy, it’s just civilians.”

Shatz brought a case to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2019 bringing evidence that Frontex knew that its joint operation Triton would increase death rates in the Central Mediterranean, but didn’t change the policy – which is still in force. 

According to him, Frontex used the drownings “to justify the policy of capture and forced transfer to the camps.”

“First they created the conditions in which people would drown to death, then they said ‘Okay, before drowning and being transferred to a camp […] the latter is the lesser evil’,” Shatz said.

Frontex launched Operation Triton in 2014 to replace the Italian Mare Nostrum, a search and rescue operation started after 366 people died in a shipwreck off the coast of Lampedusa. But unlike Mare Nostrum, Triton shifted the focus from search and rescue to border control, increasing surveillance.

In the years following the launch of Triton, the death rate in the Mediterranean increased by 30%. 

Frontex knew this would happen, Shatz’s lawsuit at The Hague alleged. 

The EU policy constituted the “most lethal and organised attack against civilian population the ICC had jurisdiction over in its entire history,” the lawsuit read.

The European Commission dismissed the accusation and said the bloc’s priority has always been to protect lives. Josep Borrell, then Spanish foreign minister claimed Libya’s migrant camps couldn’t “be referred to as torture detention centres”.

The third, and final, example of human rights violations Frontex is accused of is evidence that migrants and asylum seekers were removed from safety and put back in the middle of the sea after reaching European soil.

“This is plain murder,” Shatz said. “We’re looking at 70,000 people who made land on Greek soil or were captured on Greek waters — there’s no difference in legal terms — then they knocked at the door of asylum centres to apply for asylum and were treated like criminals.” 

“They were put into vans, put back ashore, put back on boats and then abandoned at sea with no means of navigation, no means of communication, no food,” he added.

“This is the everyday job of a Frontex agent in Greece. This is the division of labour between Greece and Frontex. Frontex is in charge of the internal surveillance, interception, nailing down and stopping the boat. Then they call the Greeks to do the ‘dirty job’ of moving migrants to rafts and abandoning them at sea.”

Why is Frontex so hard to be brought to justice?

When Shatz’s NGO front-Lex started operating, there was not a single case against Frontex for alleged human rights violations — despite the issue being brought up by investigative journalists and migrant advocates. 

He and his partners were the first to file a lawsuit against Frontex in 2019, though the case is pending and it could be years before a judgement. 

“The damage is already done, it has already happened. We’re dealing with ongoing policies, arguably ongoing atrocities and crimes, which are quite urgent to adjudicate,” he said. 

The Israeli lawyer alleged Frontex is hard to be prosecuted “by design”. Behind the agency, there are the EU member states. Frontex is “just a skeleton,” Shatz said, made up of individual countries’ border forces.

“If you want to challenge the policies of Frontex in Greece, where do you go?,” he asked. “I have an applicant who was thrown into the water and watched others drown to death. He was rescued by Turkish authorities and he’s now in detention. Where should he go?” Frontex would bounce responsibility to Greece because the country is in charge of the joint operation. But bringing individual states to court is long and counterproductive, Shatz said.

“To date, Frontex enjoys full impunity, they’re completely unaccountable,” the lawyer said. According to the current regulation, “the responsibility for the control and surveillance of the external borders lies with the Member States” — Frontex is only responsible for the “coordination” of national forces.

Currently, there’s an ongoing damage lawsuit against the border agency, brought by a Syrian family with four young children who requested asylum in Greece in 2016.

A few days after applying for asylum, they were put on a plane and told they would be brought to Athens. During the flight, the family was separated from one another. When they got off the plane, they realised they had been brought to Turkey.

“Their return to Turkey was unlawful because their request to be granted asylum had not been processed, nor had a decision been taken that they could be returned to Turkey, as required by EU law,” Lisa-Marie Komp, one of the lawyers representing the Syrian family, told Euronews.

“The fundamental rights of the Syrian family had been violated. The flight was operated by the EU Agency Frontex together with Greece. Frontex’s mandate requires it to ensure compliance with fundamental rights in all its activities. In this case, Frontex had failed to do so.”

The case is significant because, until now, Frontex has always pointed to the EU member states in regard to alleged human rights violations. 

“However, Frontex is required to ensure compliance with fundamental rights in all its activities,” Komp said. “This means that Frontex itself should bear liability if it fails to fulfil its monitoring tasks and fundamental rights are violated. Given that there have been numerous reports about Frontex’s involvement in pushbacks in recent years, the outcome of the case will have an important impact.”

The case was put in front of the Court of Justice of the European Union on 9 March. 

Frontex lawyers said the case should have been brought against Greek authorities rather than the border agency. “Shared duty of responsibility” in the context of the handling of asylum seekers between Frontex and Greece does not mean that there is also a “shared liability”, the Frontex representatives said.

Euronews has contacted Frontex’s press office but has not received a response.

Should Frontex be abolished – or can it be turned into a force for good?

While activist groups call for Frontex to be disbanded — such as the aptly named Abolish Frontex — neither Komp nor Shatz thinks Frontex should be gotten rid of.  

Instead, they want the border agency to follow its own mandate and respect human rights, maritime and international law,  plus be held accountable for its alleged violations.

There are signs that Frontex has been trying to reform itself over the past two years. 

New director Hans Leijtens has committed to ending the agency’s involvement in illegal pushbacks, while promising greater transparency. 

A fundamental rights officer, Jonas Grimheden, is now in place to make sure the agency follows its Fundamental Rights Action Plan, adopted in 2021.

But Shatz argues that it’s still not enough. 

“You can keep changing the names and the faces [at the top of Frontex’s management], but the policies remain the same. Accountability is important, of course, and the fact that Leggeri stepped down doesn’t mean he’s not criminally or otherwise liable, we’re still working on that,” Shatz said. “But what about their policies? They will tell you excuses. This is high-level bullshit.”

Giving hope for actual change is the role Frontex played in managing the Ukrainian refugee influx to the EU after the Russian invasion last year.

In an open-access book about the EU’s response to the large-scale displacement, Mariana Gkliati, Assistant Professor of International and EU law at Radboud University in the Netherlands, wrote: “The last months have shown the potential of Frontex to evolve into a reliable border management actor that operates with efficiency, transparency, and full respect for human rights.”

In order to respond to the emergency, the EU introduced the Temporary Protection Directive — an exceptional measure to provide immediate help to those fleeing the war. These refugees enjoying temporary protection are entitled to a residence permit for the duration of the directive, are guaranteed access to the asylum procedure, suitable accommodation, employment, medical care, education, and more.

“In response to the Ukrainian displacement, Frontex has shown a diametrically opposite face to the human rights criticism of the last years,” Gkliati told Euronews. “EU policy in the area has been revolving in the last decades around security and containment. As a result, migration management has become equivalent to border control and mobility deterrance. The practice regarding the Ukrainian displacement is challenging this perception. We saw that a border management agency can have a role even with an open borders policy.”

No concerns have been expressed by observers so far regarding the direct or indirect involvement of the agency in any human rights violations with respect to persons (Ukrainians or not) fleeing the war in Ukraine, Gkliati said. “So, there is space in the agency’s mandate not only for regular border management, but also for addressing crisis situations at the borders in full respect of human rights, and for conducting voluntary returns in dignity and safety.”

Still, people like Komp and Shatz aren’t satisfied with the promise of change. 

For the thousands dying at sea or ending up in third-party countries deemed unsafe, the lawyers want Frontex to be held accountable for its actions today.

The main issue with Frontex, the lawyer said, “it’s not about migration. It’s about the collapse of the rule of law in general. Migrants are just the first victims, but eventually, this will also reach EU citizens.”

Gkliati said that reforming Frontex is a matter of “volatile political will and good intentions.”

“It becomes apparent that the misorientation of the agency until now has not actually been the result of legal gaps or unclear obligations, as has been argued by the former Frontex Executive Director, but is rather a matter of political will and the direction given by the Commission and the Council,” she said. “This shows that a change in the direction and the practices of the agency is indeed possible. The agency’s legal obligations are clear and the EBCG Regulation allows for a mandate to undertake such border management operations.”

She added: “We cannot depend on volatile political will and good intentions. In order to ensure full compliance with the law, Frontex needs to be governed by strong accountability mechanisms. Above all, we need an effective system of external and independent monitoring.”



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View Q&A: Lineker is a symbol of a culture war, says football writer

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The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent in any way the editorial position of Euronews.

A 7 March tweet by England’s former striker turned football pundit Gary Lineker criticising the UK government’s new Illegal Migration bill turned into a heated public dispute that is still ongoing. 

In his Twitter post aimed at Home Secretary Suella Braverman, Lineker said the language used to launch the policy was “not dissimilar to that used in Germany in the 30s,” prompting a storm of outrage from the country’s conservatives.

This prompted the BBC to pull Lineker off air from its flagship Match of the Day show on Friday, sparking a further outcry over the weekend, which eventually resulted in him being reinstated by Monday.

Amidst the continued debate, Euronews View spoke with James Montague, football journalist and the author of 1312: Among the Ultras, A Journey With the World’s Most Extreme Fans, about how Lineker grew from a football icon to a key public figure advocating for human rights in Britain, the growing far-right sentiments in the country, and the role of the current government in fuelling the animosities towards migrants. 

Euronews View: What do you think events surrounding Gary Lineker said had such staying power in the UK over the past week or so? Why are people so disturbed and/or bolstered by it?

James Montague: Gary Lineker, very strangely, has gone from being a national hero, as you know, a striker for England, scoring a hat-trick in the World Cup in ’86 against Poland, to a mild-mannered presenter of the Match of the Day, which is the big highlights package for the Premier League. 

He’s one of the most famous men in the country — and he’s gone from that in the past couple of years to be a kind of avatar of the culture war that is being waged essentially by a kind of very right-wing Conservative party and their acolytes in the media. 

So for a while now, it’s been building because he has, through his very popular Twitter account, frequently shown support for progressive causes: being against Brexit, support for refugees, support for migrants. 

This has just absolutely infuriated the right-wing press in Britain, which is extremely powerful and which is very connected to all the power centres in the conservative government as well.

And this has been also mixed in with the BBC being one of the bête noires of the right wing of the Conservative party. 

As much as they hate the European Union, they also hate the BBC. They see is it as a kind of home of “left-wing agitation” and “cultural Marxism”. 

Since they’ve been in power for 13 years, they have been slowly degrading it and destroying it and putting people in charge of it editorially, and also its chairman currently, and there’s been a slew of conservative donors who have a long track record of wanting to destroy the BBC.

Claiming asylum in the United Kingdom is impossible — literally, it’s one of the most far-right immigration policies you could imagine. 

And coming up against that has triggered these culture war fanatics whilst at the same time mixing it in with this hatred of the BBC.

And all these things have come together, with Gary Lineker somehow being the cherry on top of this pie.

Euronews View: How would you describe the rhetoric around refugees and migrants in the UK over the past couple of months?

James Montague: I mean, we’re getting close to the far right now. The Conservative party is now in its last days. It’s so far behind in the polls.

What happens when you have a government that’s been in charge for so long is that it becomes tired, it becomes inefficient. 

The rhetoric has been building for years against asylum seekers and now migrants, but because there is nothing else apart from culture war stuff, this issue of small boat arrivals — you know, small boats coming over from France, 45,000 people came over the last year — yet it’s still far less than Germany and France, and as a proportion of the population it’s very small. 

But for them, it’s a gift that they can use to try and somehow win the next elections.

So it’s all politics thinking that going hard and frightening on refugees and asylum seekers in an election win for them because they’re not really fighting the Labour party, which is quite interesting.

Who they’re really fighting is the even further right of the Conservative party, which is what dragged us towards Brexit, and also people like Nigel Farage, the Reform party, which has been set up, and which could win the conservative vote in the next election.

It’s a lot of navel-gazing within the conservative right wing of the Conservative party that ends up in a nervous breakdown, and that means basically the rest of the countries is dragged through the mud as it was with Brexit and as it is with this asylum crisis.

Euronews View: To some, it might seem highly unusual that a former football player, now a pundit, turned out to be the loudest in defending both migrants and also the UK as a hospitable, friendly nation. How would you comment on this?

James Montague: I suppose every era, every moment has the hero they deserve, right? And ours is Gary Lineker. 

It’s so difficult to get traction as somebody who has progressive viewpoints because if you look at the media landscape and the people that are the dominant voices within the UK, even though the Conservative party have been in power for 13 years, they complain that the cultural space is still dominated by leftists, by these “cultural Marxists,” but it’s not. 

It’s dominated by Rupert Murdoch-owned media. It’s dominated by the Daily Mails of this world.

All the kinds of progressive publications are small. I mean, The Guardian’s actual leadership in terms of sold newspapers is extremely low. There are very few places apart from social media that cut through.

And Gary Lineker — yes, he’s a former football player — but I would say even before this, he was probably one of the most famous people in Britain. 

That’s the kind of cache that he has, and what he says is going to resonate in a way that can’t be controlled by the mainstream tabloid press and by politicians.

The kind of unique set of circumstances that have developed over the years means that social media has the potential to put somebody up on a pedestal like this.

It just happens to be a figure that was previously pretty benign, but as he’s become a target in this culture war, he has become a lot more vocal about all these issues. 

Eventually, it shows how popular he is, that this all blew up in the BBC’s face, and he effectively was allowed back after being suspended. And that it was a complete own goal for the BBC.

Euronews View: As someone who has followed the far right within football globally, how important is what Lineker said? Can he change perceptions of the very people the sport appeals to, or has he drawn a target on his own back?

James Montague: Whatever far-right football space there is and whatever political space there is, the two are virtually merging at the moment in terms of political platform. 

We’re moving into an era now — and it’s going to get worse until there’s an election next year — where nothing is off the table. 

Things that would have been impossible to imagine 15 years ago, or 20 or 30 years ago, that would have been on the [UK fascist party] National Front’s manifesto: a complete end to immigration, end of the NHS, getting rid of the BBC, getting out of the European Union… 

These were insane minority issues on the far right, and they are now coming to pass. 

And it’s definitely not quite the same for Lineker. We didn’t see tifos or chants supporting him at the games or anything like that.

In a way, he’s almost transcended football in this respect; he’s become a kind of political figure. 

And whether it’s on the progressive left or whether it’s on the right and far right, he either embodies everything that you love or despise or believe is appropriate.

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‘They spit on us’: What’s really going on in the El Ouardia migrant centre in Tunis

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Officially, the El Ouardia migrant centre in Tunis is meant to serve as a reception centre to “welcome and orient” new arrivals to Tunisia. However, what is actually happening there has long remained opaque because NGOs and lawyers aren’t allowed access. The FRANCE 24 Observers decided to investigate the nightmarish conditions inside. Our source told us that about fifty migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, most of them Black Africans, are being arbitrarily detained in the squalid centre.

Léopold (not his real name) came from the Ivory Coast to Tunisia several years ago to attend university. When he graduated, he decided to stay and work in the country. He also got married and had a child. However, Léopold was not a legal resident of the country where he had made his home. And so, in 2021, he began sorting out his papers and regularising his situation.

However, before Léopold was able to finish the process, he was arrested alongside several other Ivorians when police raided the headquarters of the Association of active Ivoirians in Sfax (AIVAS) on August 21, 2021. He was placed in detention in Tunis.

‘There is a difference between what the judicial system decides and what the border police do’

A judge at the Ariana tribunal said that Léopold should be released on July 22, 2022. However, instead of being allowed to return home to his family, police brought him to the El Ouardia migrant centre in Tunis, where he has been arbitrarily detained ever since. He has received no legal or administrative support.

According to a judge, I was freed last summer. But there is a difference between what the judicial system decides and what the border police do.

From the moment I stepped into the migrant centre, I realised that the guards there were ready to harm us and it gave me a good indication of what to expect during my stay there. They spit on us, they called us “kahlouch” [Editor’s note: a derogatory term for Black people in North African Arabic] or “guirguira” [Editor’s note: a word that is supposed to imitate the sounds made by a monkey].

“Tunisia is our country, we’ll do what we want with you,” the guards told us.


This video was filmed from the back of a police car on February 27 by a person being taken, along with others, from Mornaguia Prison to the El Ouardia migrant centre. “We don’t know where they are taking us,” the man says. He was arrested along with others on February 13 during a campaign to arrest Black Africans.

Most of the people detained in the centre don’t want to go back to their countries of origin, but they are also being denied their freedom. I came to study in Tunis and then started working there. My family and my child are in Tunisia, I don’t plan on going back [to my home country].

Since February, police in Tunisia have been carrying out a campaign of violence and arrests of Black African migrants living in Tunisia. The campaign intensified in mid-February when Tunisian President Kais Saied called for the deportation of the “hoards of clandestine migrants” in the country.

>> Watch on The Observers: The growing xenophobic violence against sub-Saharan migrants in Tunisia

‘Many of us were transferred to the centre from Mornaguia Prison because there is no room there’

Before the arrests began in February, there weren’t many of us in the centre. But since then, we’ve seen many people brought to El Ouardia even after a judge has ordered their release – like me. There are also migrants transferred to the centre after spending months in prison. 

 

There are about fifty men in the centre and four women.

 

“There are fifteen of us in this room,” says our Observer. The footage shows metal beds and mattresses on the ground. In another room (shown at right) ten people sleep on the floor. Screengrabs taken from videos sent by our Observer on March 9, 2023.

 

Many of us were transferred to the centre from Mornaguia Prison because there is no room there. One of the people who was detained there said that he spent six nights without a bunk, so, here, we take turns sleeping. 

There are so many of us in the dormitories. It’s chaotic. There are a lot of sick people who then spread their illnesses to others. A number of people ill with COVID were transferred here without ever being given a test.

 


In this video, a group of Black African migrants in Tunisia call for help from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in this video posted on February 26.

 

This video shows the men’s toilets in the El Ouardia migrant centre.
This video shows the men’s toilets in the El Ouardia migrant centre. Screengrab from a video sent by our Observer on March 9, 2023.

 

‘What happens in the centre rarely gets out’

Since I’ve been here, we’ve called on the authorities several times to give us papers. On February 27, those of us detained here in El Ouardia held a protest, calling on the UN High Commissioner to take an interest in our plight. 

Even though the centre is run by the National Guard [known as the gendarmerie], when we started protesting, they brought the border police in to shut down the protest. They handcuffed us, stripped us and beat us savagely. Some of the men here got terrible injuries including wounds and dislocated shoulders. 

But what happens in the centre rarely gets out.

 

@monsieurleministre25 ♬ son original – monsieurleministre

This man was transferred from Mornaguia Prison to the El Ouardia migrant centre. He protested the morning of February 27 along with other people detained at the centre, calling for restoration of their rights and freedom. “The police were deployed this morning to prevent us [from protesting]. They say that we aren’t in prison, but they are lying to us,” he said.

 

‘Officially, it’s a reception centre, though it functions like a detention centre’

The number of detainees fluctuates in the El Ouardia “Reception and Orientation Centre” – as it is officially known – according to Romdhane Ben Amor, the spokesperson for the Tunisian Forum of Economic and Social Rights.

There are migrant centres in each region in Tunisia. However, the El Ouardia centre is the only one run by the ministry of the interior, which means that it is the only one where migrants are being arbitrarily detained in this extreme way.

Ben Amor explained:

The Tunisian National Guard, and thus the ministry of the interior, transfers migrants to this centre from prisons and other detention centres before either deporting them or liberating them. According to the latest figures from the World Organisation Against Torture, one of the only NGOs that has managed to access this centre, 51 people are currently being detained there.

Between 2011 and 2013, the centre was open to humanitarian organisations. However, since 2013, only organisations that have an agreement with the Ministry of the Interior have been able to access it.

And, since July 25, 2021 [Editor’s note: the date when President Kais Saied suspended parliament], the centre has only been used for detaining migrants and operates at maximum capacity.

 


In this video, filmed on February 27, an Ivorian man shows the injuries inflicted on him by border police. “They stripped us to beat us, they beat us like dogs,” says the man.

 

The legal status of El Ouardia centre isn’t completely clear. Officially, it’s a reception centre, though it functions like a detention centre.  

‘It’s like they are in prison without any hope of getting out or getting a decision’

There’s also another aspect of how the El Ouardia centre operates that remains unclear. At El Ouardia, detention and liberation are administrative matters and not judicial. That means that a detainee can not appeal their case or ask for judicial support, like help from a lawyer. On the contrary, the decision to detain the person is taken by public servant. There is no guarantee that the person can contest the decision.

Unfortunately, the detention is arbitrary and the migrants who are detained have no information about when they might be released. As if they were in a prison, without any hope of getting out or judgment.

 


This video filmed in the El Ouardia migrant centre in March 2020 shows officials treating migrants roughly and grouping them together before deporting them to the border with Algeria.

 

When the people detained in the migrant centre try to insist that they have rights, they are met with violence, but that isn’t new. These police were transferred to El Ouardia in a punitive role. They aren’t used to working with migrant populations and use violence as a response to everything. 

The Tunis administrative tribunal declared in 2020 that the way that people were detained in the centre was illegal. And even though the Ministry of the Interior promised reforms under the Mechichi government, nothing has changed since.

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Xenophobia grows amidst raids and repeated attacks on sub-Saharan Africans in Tunisia

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Tunisian law enforcement has launched a wave of repression against the country’s sub-Saharan African population, carrying out random identity checks and sometimes violently arresting them, leaving their children abandoned and offering no access to any kind of legal support. Xenophobic and racist sentiments have also been circulating widely on Tunisian social media, a toxic climate that recent statements by the Tunisian president only exacerbated.

Tunisian police in a number of cities carried out a campaign against the migrant community, arresting and detaining around 300 people from sub-Saharan Africa, including women and children, between February 14 and 16. 

Police in a western suburb of Tunis arrested the staff working at a daycare run by an Ivorian couple… as well as a number of parents who had come to pick up their children on February 16. The adults were brought to the police station, apparently so that authorities could check their papers, according to the Tunis-based media outlet Radio Libre Francophone.

Some of the parents who were arrested managed to get their small children to friends or family. Other children were taken into the care of staff with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. However, many of the children were taken from their parents and placed into a foster centre in a Tunis suburb.





Fuel was added to the fire when Tunisian president Kaïs Saïed said that sub-Saharan migrants were “a source of crime and delinquency” during a meeting with the National Security Council on February 21. 

‘It’s really, really difficult to get a residency permit for Tunisia’

Melvin (not his real name) works with an association in Tunis. He says that it is difficult and costly to get a residency permit in Tunisia. 

No one wants to stay in the country illegally but it is very, very hard to get a residency permit in Tunisia [Editor’s note: because of complex administrative procedures, about 60% of interns and students from sub-Saharan Africa don’t have a valid residency permit].

I know a lot of students who don’t have residency permits, even if they go to expensive private universities that cost more than 3,000 euros a year.

When you arrive in Tunisia, you are allowed to stay in the country for three months. After that, you have to pay 80 dinars [about 24 euros] for each month that you stay beyond that. So many sub-Saharan migrants live in poverty. So how can they pay these fees, not to mention other expenses?

Most of the community expected [the president to make] calming statements but what was said was shocking. We were expecting him to announce mass regularisation for the migrant community, so they could go home [Editor’s note: undocumented migrants who want to leave Tunisia cannot do so without paying fines for overstaying their visas].

And so many migrants accumulate these penalties because they can’t get their residency permit. And so they prefer to try their luck crossing the Mediterranean. 

@birdmansacko ♬ son original – Birdman Sacko

This is a video of a Guinean migrant filmed at the port in Sfax, a city in Eastern Tunisia. The person filming says that he and his friend hope to arrive safe and sound in Italy or in France.

Police arrested about thirty people from sub-Saharan Africa in the northeastern peninsula of Cap Bon on February 20 as part of what the government has claimed is a national security campaign to verify the papers of people from this migrant community, according to radio Mosaïque FM. This wave of repression continued when, on the morning of February 22, 35 people suspected of irregular immigration status were arrested and detained in Kasserine.

Even though Tunisia is often considered as just a transitory stop on the migration route from Africa to Europe, about 21,466 people from sub-Saharan live there, according to the Tunisian National Institute of Statistics. However, many other groups, including NGOs who work with migrants, believe the number is actually much higher. 

‘We don’t have any news about the mothers. Did they go before a judge? Why were they arrested?’

Daoud (not his real name) is originally from sub-Saharan Africa, though we are keeping his name and his country of origin anonymous to protect his identity. He has been living in Sfax, the economic capital of Tunisia, for several years but has friends living in Tunis.

He was terrified when he heard that two of his female friends, who are related and both have small children, went out to get groceries on February 14 and never came back. Afraid, Daoud called another friend living in the same Tunis neighbourhood, only to get no response. 

Considering the sickening situation in Tunis and especially in the neighborhood where they were living, I wanted to make sure they were safe. I contacted dozens of people who might know where [my three friends] were. Finally, I talked to someone on the morning of February 15 who said that they had all been detained. The two women were taken to Raoued and detained there. Same for my friend, who was arrested in a café. 

The two women are both mothers with tiny children. When the mothers were arrested, their daughters, aged just one and two years old, were left at home alone, locked in the apartment where they were all living. It is inhumane to leave children like that.

A family from the Ivory Coast, including two mothers (wearing red), were arrested on February 14 and detained in Raoued, a Tunis suburb. Photo sent by our Observer, “Daoud”

When Daoud realized that the babies were home alone, locked in the flat, he did everything he could to save them, even though he was miles away. Along with assistance from the landlord, a friend managed to break a window and get into the flat.  

We went to the police station to plead for the mothers to be released but the Ariana tribunal said that the two women needed to pay their debts because both of them had irregular status. Finally, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees took over care of the baby girls. 

Right now, we still have no news of the mothers. Did they go before a judge? Why were they arrested?

There have been other cases where parents have had to get a lawyer in order to regain custody of children placed in detention. We’ve also heard of other children being placed in a foster centre without access to their parents. 

A number of Tunisian organisations published a joint statement, denouncing the campaign of abusive arrests as well as comments made by officials that they considered “dangerous and inciting hate towards migrants from sub-Saharan Africa”, as well as the random identity checks and lack of access to legal support. The associations also called on the authorities to release all of the people who had been arrested and put an end to these “systematic arbitrary arrests”. 

In this toxic climate perpetuated by the authorities, many members of the Tunisian public have felt emboldened to intimidate or even assault people from sub-Saharan Africa.  

This woman from sub-Saharan Africa was attacked and left with a bleeding injury to the head on February 14 in a neighbourhood in the town of Sfax. Associations of Ivorians in Tunisia said that she was attacked by the young men you see in this video.
This woman from sub-Saharan Africa was attacked and left with a bleeding injury to the head on February 14 in a neighbourhood in the town of Sfax. Associations of Ivorians in Tunisia said that she was attacked by the young men you see in this video. Screengrab/ Maghreb Ivoire TV

‘When police see someone is from sub-Saharan Africa, then that is enough for them to be arrested in the street or on public transport or even at work’

Daoud continued:

In the neighborhoods where people from sub-Saharan Africa live, there are often groups of young Tunisians who gather outside of the buildings where migrants live. I advised a young woman I know to move for her safety. 

When police see someone is from sub-Saharan Africa, then that is enough for them to be arrested in the street or on public transport or even at work.

In fact, it is almost impossible for people to even leave Tunis without having their papers checked. 

‘I’ve noticed a palpable fear of Black people in Tunisia’

Moreover, the Tunisian Nationalist Party (Parti nationaliste tunisien), which has been in existence since 2018 has been carrying out a campaign to “raise awareness” about what they call the “sub-Saharan invasion” into certain neighbourhoods in Tunis and Sfax. 

These Facebook posts call on Tunisians to refrain from renting to people from sub-Saharan Africa or hiring them. In the comments section, there are lots of xenophobic and racist comments as well as comments from sympathisers to the cause who say they want to help apply this locally.
These Facebook posts call on Tunisians to refrain from renting to people from sub-Saharan Africa or hiring them. In the comments section, there are lots of xenophobic and racist comments as well as comments from sympathisers to the cause who say they want to help apply this locally. Observers

The party also draws from the “great replacement theory“, championed by the extreme right in both Europe and the United States. 

A petition launched by the Tunisian Nationalist Party has collected nearly a thousand signatures. The petition demands the expulsion of undocumented migrants, the repeal of a law related to the fight against racial discrimination, as well as a requirement for all sub-Saharans to have a visa to enter Tunisia.
A petition launched by the Tunisian Nationalist Party has collected nearly a thousand signatures. The petition demands the expulsion of undocumented migrants, the repeal of a law related to the fight against racial discrimination, as well as a requirement for all sub-Saharans to have a visa to enter Tunisia. Tunisian Nationalist Party

Daoud continued: 

This party’s campaign to “raise awareness” has contributed to the hatred towards people from sub-Saharan Africa. Members of the party go to cafés, metro stations or to “louages” [Editor’s note: shared taxis for inter-urban transport] to “raise awareness”, essentially spreading hate about people from sub-Saharan Africa. I understand the country is experiencing a difficult economic period but it isn’t the presence of sub-Saharans in Tunisia that has caused that. 

They have a racist ideology. This is dangerous because political figures like the president indirectly encourage violence, which could lead to actual acts. I’ve noticed a palpable fear of Black people in Tunisia. Even at work, my colleagues refuse to drink the same water as me.

The FRANCE 24 Observers team attempted to reach the spokesperson for the ministry of the interior for a comment but did not get a response. We will update this page if we do. 

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Top Qatari official puts worker deaths for World Cup ‘between 400 and 500’

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A top Qatari official involved in the country’s World Cup organization has put the number of worker deaths for the tournament “between 400 and 500” for the first time, a drastically higher number than any other previously offered by Doha.

The comment by Hassan al-Thawadi, the secretary-general of Qatar‘s Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, appeared to come off the cuff during an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan.

It also threatened to reinvigorate criticism by human rights groups over the toll of hosting the Middle East’s first World Cup for the migrant labor that built over $200 billion worth of stadiums, metro lines and new infrastructure needed for the tournament.

In the interview, portions of which Morgan posted online, the British journalist asks al-Thawadi: “What is the honest, realistic total do you think of migrant workers who died from – as a result of work they’re doing for the World Cup in totality?”

“The estimate is around 400, between 400 and 500,” al-Thawadi responds. “I don’t have the exact number. That’s something that’s been discussed.”

But that figure hasn’t been discussed publicly by Qatari officials previously. Reports from the Supreme Committee dating from 2014 through the end of 2021 only include the number of deaths of workers involved in building and refurbishing the stadiums now hosting the World Cup.

Those released figures put the total number of deaths at 40. They include 37 from what the Qataris describe as nonwork incidents such as heart attacks and three from workplace incidents. One report also separately lists a worker death from the coronavirus amid the pandemic.

Al-Thawadi pointed to those figures when discussing work just on stadiums in the interview, right before offering the “between 400 to 500” death toll for all the infrastructure for the tournament.

In a later statement, the Supreme Committee said al-Thawadi was referring to “national statistics covering the period of 2014-2020 for all work-related fatalities (414) nationwide in Qatar, covering all sectors and nationalities.”

Since FIFA awarded the tournament to Qatar in 2010, the country has taken some steps to overhaul the country’s employment practices. That includes eliminating its so-called kafala employment system, which tied workers to their employers, who had say over whether they could leave their jobs or even the country.

Qatar also has adopted a minimum monthly wage of 1,000 Qatari riyals ($275) for workers and required food and housing allowances for employees not receiving those benefits directly from their employers. It also has updated its worker safety rules to prevent deaths.

“One death is a death too many. Plain and simple,” al-Thawadi adds in the interview.

Activists have called on Doha to do more, particularly when it comes to ensuring workers receive their salaries on time and are protected from abusive employers.

Al-Thawadi’s comment also renews questions on the veracity of both government and private business reporting on worker injuries and deaths across the Gulf Arab states, whose skyscrapers have been built by laborers from South Asia nations like India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

“This is just the latest example of Qatar’s inexcusable lack of transparency on the issues of workers’ deaths,” said Nicholas McGeehan of Fairsquare, a London-based group which advocates for migrant workers in the Middle East. “We need proper data and thorough investigations, not vague figures announced through media interviews.

“FIFA and Qatar still have a lot of questions to answer, not least where, when, and how did these men die and did their families receive compensation.”

Mustafa Qadri, the executive director of Equidem Research, a labor consultancy that has published reports on the toll of the construction on migrant laborers, also said he was surprised by al-Thawadi’s remark.

“For him now to come and say there is hundreds, it’s shocking,” he told The Associated Press. “They have no idea what’s going on.”

(AP)



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