SFAX,
Tunisia — As dawn breaks over the
Mediterranean, Tunisian coastguards intercept a flimsy craft packed with migrants, bringing
their dream of reaching Europe to an end — for now.
اضافة اعلان
“This is your final warning: stop!” an officer
shouts.
Some two dozen migrants, wearing inflated inner
tubes as makeshift life preservers, look downcast as they realize the game is
up.
But Fatim, an 18-year-old from the Ivory Coast who
spent a year working as a cleaner in Tunis to raise 1,250 euros in smugglers’
fees, says she will try again.
She sobs as she clambers from the rusty home-made
vessel onto the coastguards’ modest speedboat.
“I don’t want to stay in Tunisia,” she says. “Life
here is hard.”
The North African country, just 130km from Italy’s
Lampedusa island, has long been a launchpad for people fleeing violence and
poverty across the continent and seeking refuge in Europe.
In May last year Tunis signed a deal with Rome,
which agreed to supply economic aid in exchange for Tunisian efforts to stem
clandestine migration.
But while the Tunisian authorities intercept
thousands of migrants a year, most are released once they are back on Tunisian
soil, where few want to stay.
“If I found another boat I’d leave again straight
away — I’ll never give up,” said Guinean migrant Ali, 20, after he was released
at Sfax port.
In just one night early this week, the coastguard
intercepted 130 African migrants, including children and babies, on four craft
attempting the crossing from the central region of Sfax.
Idia Sow, a 26-year-old Guinean suffering the
after-effects of a stroke, said she had paid smugglers 1,560 euros for places
for herself and her three-month-old baby on an inflatable boat headed for
Lampedusa.
The migrants are taken back to the port in the
provincial capital of the same name, their details are recorded — and then they
are released.
Officials say the coastguard lacks the resources to
halt the flow.
“We’re in a vicious cycle. We make enormous efforts
to stop these migrants, but in the end they’re released and then we find them
trying again,” said the patrol’s commander, Col. Maj. Brahim Fahmi.
Hours earlier, AFP journalists saw police officers
brandishing batons and pistols clear more than 100 migrants from an area of
scrubland 30km along the coast from Sfax.
Some said they had been waiting two weeks for boats.
“This summer we hit a record of more than 17,000
migrants (intercepted off Sfax), almost double the figure in recent years,”
said coastguard official Saber Younsi.
“This our role,” he said. “We have to keep doing it,
but there’s been a worrying evolution.”
The demand has created one of the few thriving new
industries in Tunisia: clandestine boat manufacture.
Younsi said new
smuggling networks were emerging to cash in on the surging market, with demand
also coming from Tunisians who have given up hope of finding decent jobs and in
some cases are emigrating as entire families.
As he spoke at Sfax port, Younsi was surrounded by
piles of hundreds of captured migrant boats.
According to official figures, more than 22,500
migrants have been intercepted off the Tunisian coast since the start of the
year, around half of them from sub-Saharan Africa.
Some 536 people, mostly
Tunisians, have been arrested
on suspicion of people smuggling.
Younsi said the authorities were struggling with
limited means.
“If the same trend continues, we’ll hit a point where this
phenomenon gets out of control,” he said.
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