TUNIS: Migrants in Tunisia’s port city of Sfax who are aiming to make Europe their new home are now sharing the burden and the blame for escalating tensions deeply tinged with racism, amid the fears of European leaders who are trying to stanch the numbers of people arriving at their shores.
The antagonism that exploded in recent weeks in Sfax between Tunisians and mainly Black sub-Saharan migrants is widely seen as a turning point in how this North African nation deals with migration.
European leaders are offering millions to Tunisia amid the abuses, and activists fear a migration summit in Rome on Sunday will pursue an anti-migrant vision that puts the onus on Africa to keep Africans out of Europe.
Hundreds of migrants have drowned at sea trying to reach Italy in fragile boats, but now migrants awaiting their chance to cross the Mediterranean cower in fear, some beaten or bused by authorities to new destinations, others dumped in the desert.
Musa Khalid from Congo was among a group of migrants expelled from Tunisia and found by Libyan border guards huddling in a barren zone last weekend. He said that Tunisian officials took their belongings and money before transferring them out of the Tunisian port city of Sfax and dropping them off without food or water.
“As we tried to enter Tunisia again, they beat us badly. They broke my hand and hit my head,” he told the Associated Press near the Al Assa border point in Libya, holding up a wrist wrapped in cloth. “We are in the desert now for several days. Sir, please.”
Human rights activists from North Africa, West Africa and Europe met in Tunis this week and denounced the upcoming Rome meeting, predicting that it will amount to a bartering of values for financial incentives to stave off migrants from European shores.
“Today, the Mediterranean’s calling is no longer to be a bridge between two shores, but a wall separating all of Europe from all of the African continent,” said the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, which organized the Thursday meeting.
Italy is trying to decrease the number of migrant arrivals and stabilize Tunisia, in its worst economic crisis in a generation. Thousands of migrants have arrived in Sfax this year, but there’s no solid figure of how many are in the city, or how many have left since the anti-migrant campaign started.
Tunisia has become the main stepping stone to Italy, Europe’s gateway, replacing Libya, where widespread abuse of migrants has been reported. Of the 76,325 migrant arrivals in Italy so far this year until last Sunday, 44,151 took the sea route from Tunisia compared to 28,842 leaving from Libya, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
That is pushing up numbers in the reception center in Italy’s southernmost island of Lampedusa, with officials saying 2,500 people were at the site on Sunday following the arrival of 266 overnight.
President Kais Saied, Tunisia’s increasingly authoritarian leader, stoked racist reactions to migrants in February, saying that sub-Saharan Africans arriving in huge numbers are part of a plot to erase Tunisia’s Islamic identity. He has since tried to walk back such pronouncements, denying racist views and saying the migrant issue must be treated at its roots.
That’s one intent of the Rome conference, which will gather nearly 20 heads of state and government or ministers from the Middle East to the Sahel and North Africa, along with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and an array of financial institutions.
The one-day summit is part of Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni’s efforts to position Italy at the center of issues impacting the Mediterranean. The conference aims to come up with concrete proposals to decrease migration numbers by addressing the root causes, while combating migrant trafficking. It will also discuss energy policies, including ways to diversify energy sources, and climate change.
It’s widely viewed by human rights advocates as a road map for what is to come.
The Rome summit comes a week after Saied signed a memorandum of understanding for a “comprehensive strategic partnership” in a meeting that included Meloni and von der Leyen. Financial details weren’t released, but the EU has held out the promise of nearly 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) to help restart Tunisia’s hobbled economy, and 100 million euros ($111 million) for border control as well as search and rescue missions at sea and repatriating immigrants without residence permits.
Despite signing the deal, the Tunisian president has stressed in the past that Tunisia won’t become Europe’s border guard or serve as a land of resettlement.
Human rights organizations say that bartering money for lives is a betrayal of values. For some opponents, such deals are a new form of neo-colonialism.
“The EU risks not only perpetuating (human rights abuses) but also emboldening repressive rulers, who can brag about warmer relations with European partners while claiming credit for securing financial support for their failing economies,” New York-based Human Rights Watch said ahead of the Rome summit.
With high hopes smashed, migrants cower in fear of the anti-migrant backlash that has forced many from their shelters in Sfax and onto buses to unknown parts.
Tunisian security forces had dumped at least 500 migrants in the desert border zone with Libya earlier this month, but they were transferred July 10 to other regions of Tunisia, according to the Red Crescent.
Some were forgotten.
Libyan border guards said on June 16 that in the past few days they had found at least six men and women and children stranded under temperatures above 40 C (104 F). That is in addition to a group they came across that day, when they rescued migrants who had been huddling in the hot desert for several days near the Al Assa border point. The scene was filmed by The Associated Press.
“There are people affected as a result of the cruelty and beating ... by Tunisian border guards,” said commander of Al-Assa Desert Border Guard, Maj. Ayman Al-Qadri, carefully adding that he was citing migrants’ statements.
Migrants face misery in Tunisia
https://arab.news/6xs5h
Migrants face misery in Tunisia
- European leaders are offering millions to Tunisia amid the abuses
- Activists fear a migration summit in Rome on Sunday will pursue an anti-migrant vision that puts the onus on Africa to keep Africans out of Europe
Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry says war death toll at 44,235
- Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 777 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry
GAZA CITY: The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday that at least 44,235 people have been killed in more than 13 months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.
The toll includes 24 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 104,638 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
Syria’s ‘large quantities’ of toxic arms serious concern: watchdog
- The war has killed more than half a million people, displaced millions, and ravaged the country’s infrastructure and industry
THE HAGUE: The world’s chemical watchdog said Monday that it was “seriously concerned” by large gaps in Syria’s declaration about its chemical weapons stockpile, as large quantities of potentially banned warfare agents might be involved.
Syria agreed in 2013 to join the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, shortly after an alleged chemical gas attack killed more than 1,400 people near Damascus.
“Despite more than a decade of intensive work, the Syrian Arab Republic chemical weapons dossier still cannot be closed,” the watchdog’s director-general Fernando Arias told delegates at the OPCW’s annual meeting.
The Hague-based global watchdog has previously accused President Bashar Assad’s regime of continued attacks on civilians with chemical weapons during the Middle Eastern country’s brutal civil war.
“Since 2014, the (OPCW) Secretariat has reported a total of 26 outstanding issues of which seven have been fulfilled,” in relation to chemical weapon stockpiles in Syria, Arias said.
“The substance of the remaining 19 outstanding issues is of serious concern as it involves large quantities of potentially undeclared or unverified chemical warfare agents and chemical munitions,” he told delegates.
Syria’s OPCW voting rights were suspended in 2021, an unprecedented rebuke, following poison gas attacks on civilians in 2017.
Last year the watchdog blamed Syria for a 2018 chlorine attack that killed 43 people, in a long-awaited report on a case that sparked tensions between Damascus and the West.
Damascus has denied the allegations and insisted it has handed over its stockpiles.
Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011 after the government’s repression of peaceful demonstrations escalated into a deadly conflict that pulled in foreign powers and global jihadists.
The war has killed more than half a million people, displaced millions, and ravaged the country’s infrastructure and industry.
Syria state TV says Israel struck bridges near border with Lebanon
- The defense ministry said “the Israeli enemy launched an air aggression from the direction of Lebanese territory, targeting crossing points that it had previously hit” between the two countries
DAMASUS: Syrian state television reported Israeli strikes on several bridges in the Qusayr region near the Lebanese border on Monday, with the defense ministry reporting two civilians injured in the attacks.
Israel’s military has intensified its strikes on targets in Syria since its conflict with Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon escalated into full-scale war in late September after almost a year of cross-border hostilities.
“An Israeli aggression targeted the bridges of Al-Jubaniyeh, Al-Daf, Arjoun, and the Al-Nizariyeh Gate in the Qusayr area,” state television said, with official news agency SANA reporting damage in the attacks.
The defense ministry said “the Israeli enemy launched an air aggression from the direction of Lebanese territory, targeting crossing points that it had previously hit” between the two countries.
The attacks “injured two civilians and caused material losses,” it added.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, based in Britain, said the attacks had “killed two Syrians working with Hezbollah and injured five others,” giving a preliminary toll.
Earlier, the monitor with a network of sources in Syria had said the “Israeli strikes targeted” an official land border crossing in the Qusayr area and six bridges on the Orontes River near the border with Lebanon.
Since September, Israel has bombed land crossings between Lebanon and Syria, putting them out of service. It accuses Hezbollah of using the routes, key for people fleeing the war in Lebanon, to transfer weapons from Syria.
Iraqis sentenced to prison in $2.5bn corruption case
- A criminal court in Baghdad specializing in corruption cases issued the prison sentences ranging from three to 10 years, a statement from Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said
BAGHDAD: An Iraqi court on Monday sentenced to prison former senior officials, a businessman and others for involvement in the theft of $2.5 billion in public funds — one of Iraq’s biggest corruption cases.
The three most high-profile individuals sentenced — businessman Nour Zuhair, as well as former prime minister Mustafa Al-Kadhemi’s cabinet director Raed Jouhi and a former adviser, Haitham Al-Juburi — are on the run and were tried in absentia.
The scandal, dubbed the “heist of the century,” has sparked widespread anger in Iraq, which is ravaged by rampant corruption, unemployment and decaying infrastructure after decades of conflict.
A criminal court in Baghdad specializing in corruption cases issued the prison sentences ranging from three to 10 years, a statement from Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said.
Thirteen people received sentences on Monday, according to member of Parliament Mostafa Sanad.
Most of them, 10, are from Iraq’s tax authority and include its former director and deputy, he added on his Telegram channel.
Iraq revealed two years ago that at least $2.5 billion was stolen between September 2021 and August 2022 through 247 cheques that were cashed by five companies.
The money was then withdrawn in cash from the accounts of those firms.
A judicial source told AFP that some tax officials charged were in detention, without detailing how many.
Businessman Zuhair was sentenced to 10 years in prison, according to the judiciary statement.
He was arrested at Baghdad airport in October 2022 as he was trying to leave the country, but released on bail a month later after giving back more than $125 million and pledging to return the rest in instalments.
The wealthy businessman was back in the news in August after he reportedly had a car crash in Lebanon, following an interview he gave to an Iraqi news channel.
Juburi, the former prime ministerial adviser, received a three-year prison sentence. He also returned $2.6 million before disappearing, a judicial source told AFP.
Kadhemi’s cabinet director Raed Jouhi, also currently outside Iraq, was sentenced to six years in prison — alongside “a number of officials involved in the crime,” according to the judiciary’s statement.
Corruption is rampant across Iraq’s public institutions, but convictions typically target mid-level officials or minor players and rarely those at the top of the power hierarchy.
11 killed in Kurdish-led attacks in north Syria: war monitor
- Seven Turkiye-backed militants were also killed in the attack and in an operation by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that control swathes of northeast Syria.
BEIRUT: The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Monday 11 people including civilians were killed in attacks by a Kurdish-led force on positions of Turkiye-backed militants in north Syria.
“A woman, her two children and a man were killed... in the bombing of a military position... used by Ankara-backed factions for human smuggling operations to Turkiye,” the Britain-based monitor said.
It said seven Turkiye-backed militants were also killed in that incident and in an operation by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that control swathes of northeast Syria.
SDF special forces infiltrated a Turkiye-backed group’s military position and killed three militants, said the monitor with a network of sources inside Syria.
The SDF also booby-trapped a military position as they withdrew, in an attack that killed another four pro-Turkiye militants but also four civilians including a woman and her two children, the Observatory said.
On Sunday, 15 Ankara-backed Syrian militants were killed after the SDF infiltrated their territory, the monitor reported earlier.
The SDF is a US-backed force that spearheaded the fighting against the Daesh group in its last Syria strongholds before its territorial defeat in 2019.
It is dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), viewed by Ankara as an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Turkish troops and allied armed factions control swathes of northern Syria following successive cross-border offensives since 2016, most of them targeting the SDF.
