A lot hundreds of immigrantswhere they had been abandoned in a desert area on the border between Tunisia and Libya after being removed from Sfax last week, they were moved on Monday to accommodation in southern Tunisian towns, but non-governmental organizations are concerned about the fate of dozens more who have been pushed to the Algerian border.

“All of the 500 to 700 migrants who were on the border with Libya were transferred elsewhere,” said Salsabil Selali, executive of the NGO Human Rights Watchn (Human Rights Watch- HRW) in Tunis.

After incidents that claimed the life of a Tunisian, dozens of migrants were expelled from Sfax, which has been reduced to a key departure point for irregular migrants from sub-Saharan Africa who want to reach Europe, and driven by authorities to desolate and dangerous areas on the borders with Libya and Algeria.

The Tunisian authorities they separated the migrants who were in the demilitarized zone of Ras Zedir, on the border with Libya, in several groups and removed them from the area, according to media and NGOs. “A group is in Medenin, in the building of a high school, guarded by the security forces,” Selali explained.

An AFP correspondent went to Ben Gerdan where another group has been moved, also to a high school building. About 12 exhausted and dehydrated migrants were taken to hospital in the same city and others were taken by buses to Tataunin and Gabes.

The Tunisian association for the assistance of women victims of violence, Beity, made an urgent appeal on Monday to other NGOs and institutions to “coordinate and share resources” to offer assistance to the migrants who were “transported to the entrance of the Sahara”.

For Selali “it is a relief to know that they were able to get away from the border zone with Libya, but the lives of many other people who have been sent to the border with Algeria will be at risk if they are not rescued immediately.”

According to HRW, volat least 150 to 200 people are in this situation.

“Torture”

In a statement, the refugee aid organization Refugees International denounced “the violent arrests and forced removals of hundreds of black, African migrants” in Sfaxunderlining that some of them “are registered in the files of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees or have legal status in Tunisia”.

The World Organization Against Torture in Tunisia (OMCT) announced that it had appealed to the Committee Against Torture of UN to denounce the case of “BF, a migrant from sub-Saharan Africa who was sent to the border between Tunisia and Libya on July 2” after he was arrested without reason and “beaten with iron rods at the checkpoint” of Ben Gerdan.

These allegations of ill-treatment as well as the deprivation of water and food “of more than 700 migrants” “deliberately inflicted by government officials on BF and other migrants because of their race and with the aim of forcing them to leave the country constitute torture”, added the OMCT.

In addition, the increasingly xenophobic rhetoric against immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa is spreading in Tunisia after the statements in February by the country’s president, Kais Sagit, who assessed that irregular immigrants are a threat to the country’s demographics, while accusing them of bringing with them “violence, criminality and unacceptable practices”.

On Saturday, Saget criticized the “lies spread on social media” and claimed that migrants in Tunisia receive “humane treatment, according to our principles, contrary to what is being said by colonialist circles and by the agents acting on their behalf “, according to an announcement by the presidency.

Last night he estimated in a new announcement that “Tunisia gave a lesson to the world in the way it took care of these immigrants”.