Several Nigerians, as well as their Ivoriens, have fled their homes in Tunisia in the face of state-sanctioned attacks, taking refuge on the premises of their country’s embassy.

They were attacked by Tunisian nationals as President Kais Saied continues to deepen discrimination and unfair prejudice against dark-skinned people from Africa. 

Mr Saied recently announced that sub-Saharan migrants were on a mission to weaken the country’s Islamic Arab identity and their presence in the country has to end. 

“There is a criminal plan to change the composition of the demographic landscape in Tunisia and some individuals have received large sums of money to give residence to sub-Saharan migrants,” he said in a statement. 

Mr Saied also spoke at his country’s national security council meeting convened on the matter and referred to the migrants who have sustained the country’s informal economy with surplus cheap labour as “hordes of illegal migrants.” 

He argued that their presence in the country was a source of “violence, crime, and unacceptable acts.” 

Mr Saied insisted on the “need to quickly put an end” to the migration as it was an “unspoken goal to consider Tunisia a purely African country, with no affiliation to the Arab and Islamic nations.”

Since the announcement, hundreds of sub-Saharan migrants have been victims of targeted attacks with the majority having their housing, jobs, and freedom withdrawn. 

Forum Tunisien Pour les Droits Economiques et Sociaux (FTDES) an advocacy group in the country said over 300 migrants have been arrested in the onslaught on trumped-up charges. 

FTDES condemned the assault on the rights of migrants and called on Tunisian authorities to “fight against hate speech, discrimination and racism against them.” 

The group also tasked the government to “intervene in the event of an emergency to guarantee the dignity and rights of migrants.” 

“(We) call on the Tunisian government to respect its commitments to the implementation of international agreements on the rights of migrant workers and refugees, as well as the recommendations of the Universal Periodic Review and The Committee on the Protection of Migrant Workers,” it added. 

The actions of the government of Tunisia are in flagrant violation of the African Charter on Human Rights and Peoples as well as their obligations under the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees which Tunisia adopted in 1957.