Protests in Tunisia

Zarzis, Medenine and Tunis: 2013, 2019, 2022

For years, refugees in Tunisia are facing increasingly lengthy and uncertain asylum procedures, diminishing prospects for resettlement, the absence of rights, legal support and work opportunities, recurrent violence by authorities, and constant arbitrary displacement. Besides, a decision by UNHCR and its partners to drastically reduce their assistance to refugees in Tunisia recently has resulted in a further worsening of the situation and an even more limited access to food, health care, education, and housing.1

The disastrous human rights situation, the ongoing political and economic crisis in the country, and not least also UNHCR’s continuous failures to ensure adequate protection, in the past have sparked many protests against the UN agency. In 2013, sit-ins and hunger strikes raised attention to the unbearable living conditions in the UNHCR Choucha refugee camp. The refugees demanded an end to the UNHCR's ignorance, access to food, medical care and recognition for resettlement.2 After an Eritrean refugee was denied proper medical care and died due to failure to provide help in April 2019, a group of refugees began protesting against the ever-deteriorating situation within the UNHCR shelters and their long wait to be resettled. Instead of listening and working towards feasible solutions, Vincent Cochetel, the UNHCR’s special envoy for the Western and Central Mediterranean, only arrogantly responded that “he doesn’t care if they [the refugees] go back to Libya”.3

"The real problem is, the UN commission has abandoned its main role, which is our protection."

After more and more people began to be expelled from their shelters in 2021, a self-organised group of refugees started to draw attention to their situation. In February 2022, nearly 200 refugees launched a peaceful protest in front of the UNHCR offices in Zarzis and Medenine. Many of the protesters, coming from Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia, Chad, Niger, Libya, Central African Republic and Somalia, had to endure the cruelties of Libyan detention centres before trying to find refuge in Tunisia. The refugees repeatedly emphasized that they feel failed by the UN agency and demanded that the Tunisian authorities as well as UNHCR respected their rights as refugees and allowed evacuation to safe third countries.

“The real problem is, the UN commission has abandoned its main role, which is our protection. Instead of doing that, it has left us on the street. We were living in Zarzis, and the UN commission demanded our evacuation from there, cut off all funds and stopped protecting us.” – Saleh Saeed, a Sudanese refugee, explaining why he joined the protest4

After the police brutally evicted the protests in coordination with UNHCR after more than two months, the sit-in moved from Zarzis in front of the UNHCR main office in Tunis. The solutions proposed by the protesters kept getting ignored and several were arrested by security forces. In fact, the agency’s only response to the refugees, who have been enduring for months in undignified conditions, was to suspend its services and to close all doors in their faces. UNHCR even dared to respond to their demands in a most cynical and disrespectful way, stating that the agency is “not a travel agency”.5

Refugees protesting in front of Choucha refugee camp, 2013, © chouchaprotest.noblogs.org

Following months of tireless protest and press conferences in the Tunisian capital to make their sufferings heard, the refugees' protest was again violently dispersed by Tunisian authorities. The operation was accompanied by forced evictions, arrests, verbal and physical assaults, and the forced transfer of some members of the protest group to unknown locations, according to press statements by the Refugee Movement6 and the Forum Tunisien pour les Droits Économiques et Sociaux (FTDES)7.

Rather than engaging in serious exchange and dialogue with the remaining protesters, UNHCR and the Tunisian authorities considered that those people still protesting outside UNHCR’s office were “not covered by its mandate”, and thus were accused of obstructing the agency’s work. At the same time, the Tunisian government keeps on fuelling stigma, racism, and hate against refugees in Tunisia.8 Muhammad Faraj Abdullah, one of the demonstrators, was run over and killed by a car while protesting for his rights in front of the UNHCR office. He died before his wish for evacuation could ever be fulfilled.9

“As a refugee I have rights and UNHCR recognises me as a refugee. But I have to sleep in the streets and have to deal with bad weather and epidemics. We demand evacuation to another country because there is discrimination and persecution even from the Tunisian Council of the UNHCR. Where are my rights as a refugee?” - Saddam Bahaa Al-Din Al- Sayyid, condemning the lack of protection by UNHCR10

On September 6, 2022, while families of the disappeared and deceased at EU borders came together for a protest action in Zarzis, it was again Vincent Cochetel who, this time, blamed the mourning mothers for the disappearance of their children. As if that were not enough, he even called for their criminalisation through ‘symbolic prosecution’. Instead of blaming the EU border and visa regime, instead of denouncing the deadly migration policies of Europe, UNHCR’s special envoy chose to blame the victims, turning them into perpetrators.11

Despite repression, violence, and attempts by the UNHCR and the Tunisian government to make them invisible, refugees in Tunisia and the relatives of those who disappeared and died at sea are not giving up. Their protest for safe passage and resettlement in safe countries continues.12