Tunisia President’s Racist Remarks Incite Wave Of Violence Against Black Migrants And Citizens

During a meeting of the National Security Council on February 21st, Tunisian president Kais Saied said that “the goal of illegal immigration is to turn Tunisia into a purely African country that has no affiliation to the Arab and Islamic nations”. His remarks have fueled racially motivated violence against black migrants in Tunisia.

‘Imaginary enemies’

The claim that undocumented migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa are changing the country’s demographic composition follows the European far-right conspiracy theory of the ‘Great Replacement’. Propagated by French writer Renaud Camus, this racist theory sees immigration as a threat to the ‘purity’ and homogeneity of national identities.

Omdhane Ben Amor, representative of the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, explains how these statements aim at creating an ‘imaginary enemy’ to divert attention from the country’s political and economic crisis.

Indeed, the country has struggled to recover from the turmoil caused by the overthrow of President Ben Ali in 2011. Defying protest bans, trade unions have taken to the streets regularly following the rise of the president’s authoritarian tendencies since he dissolved parliament in 2021 and ordered the arrest of opposition leaders.

Furthermore, racist depictions of ‘swaps’ of migrants are undermined by official data as black people only make up between 10 to 15% of Tunisia’s population. The presence of black people on Tunisia’s territory is not a recent phenomenon either. They have historically been part of Tunisia’s multicultural landscape; many are descendants of slaves taken against their will, while others reside in Tunisia as university students, or work in key sectors of the economy such as agriculture.

Harassment of black migrants

The African Union has condemned President Saied’s statements, citing his obligation as a member of the union to “treat all migrants with dignity, wherever they come from, refrained from racialized hate speech that could bring people to harm, and prioritize their safety and human rights”. As such, the Union took the decision to postpone a conference planned to be held in Tunis later this month.

Saied’s response that migrants residing in Tunisia legally have nothing to fear has been disproved by Ahmed Benchemsi, director for the MENA region at Human Rights Watch. He evokes the arbitrary detention of sub-Saharan Africans irrespective of their legal status.

According to Lawyers Without Borders, over 800 sub-Saharan migrants have been detained. Many have been verbally and physically abused, losing their jobs, or having their homes vandalized. As a result, African countries Mali, Guinea and the Ivory Coast have started repatriation schemes for their nationals.

Joining the small yet important wave of support for black people by anti-racist and anti-fascist groups in the form of protests and food and clothing donations, Tunisian comedian Fatma Saidane reminded fellow Tunisians not to “assault or insult people who live on our soil in the same way we don’t accept our compatriots to be ill-treated in Europe”. Several of these human rights groups have also been the target of harassment by the wider population.

ACHRS follows the African Union’s lead and strongly condemns these recent events. We urge the Tunisian government to address the harmful consequences of such discriminatory discourse.

Tunisia needs to do more to enforce its 2018 law penalizing hate speech of a racial nature and protecting victims, the first law of its kind to be passed in the MENA region. The incidents in question demonstrate the need to reinforce it, as police response has been slow in investigating complaints.

The center stands in solidarity with local human rights groups and targeted victims in their struggle for equality and social justice in Tunisia.