In twos and threes or by the dozens, they come. “Their living conditions are very problematic,” a humanitarian official told AFP, adding that “it is not sustainable in the long term, there are no toilets, no water tanks, no real shelters.”Īt Al-Assah, dazed migrants continue to stagger in, some with only sandals on their feet. In Ras Jedir, 350 people remained in a makeshift camp, including 65 children and 12 pregnant women. They said they had been forced there by Tunisian security forces. In mid-July, the Tunisian Red Crescent said it had provided shelter to at least 630 migrants who had been taken after July 3 to Ras Jedir, about 40 kilometers north of Al-Assah.Ī few days later, though, AFP gathered testimony from hundreds of migrants still stuck in the Ras Jedir buffer zone. Human Rights Watch said up to 1,200 black Africans were “expelled, or forcibly transferred by Tunisian security forces” in July to the country’s desert border regions with Libya and Algeria. The North African country is a major gateway for migrants and asylum-seekers attempting perilous sea voyages in hopes of a better life in Europe, whose leaders have offered financial aid to help Tunisia manage the flow. Then they left me and told me to go to Libya,” he said in Al-Assah.Īt its closest point, near Sfax, Tunisia is only about 130 kilometers from the Italian island of Lampedusa. “I was at work when they caught me and brought me here, first in a police car then in a (security forces) truck. Haitham Yahiya, from Sudan, said he worked for a year in Tunisia’s construction sector after reaching the country clandestinely through Niger and Algeria. In early July, hundreds of migrants from sub-Saharan African countries were driven out of the Tunisian port city of Sfax as racial tensions flared following the death of a Tunisian man in a clash between locals and migrants. Libyan border guards told AFP that, over the past two weeks, they have rescued hundreds of migrants who said they were left by Tunisian authorities in the border region near Al-Assah, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) west of Tripoli. They speak Arabic and say they have come from Tunisia. In the distant shimmering heat haze, six figures emerge, the latest to reach the area. The man is just one among hundreds of migrants arriving daily in Libya after being abandoned in the desert borderland by Tunisian security forces, according to Libyan border guards and the migrants themselves.īy the time they reach Libya, the migrants from sub-Saharan Africa are ready to drop from exhaustion, in temperatures that have exceeded 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).ĪFP on Sunday witnessed the border guards rescue around 100 men and women from an uninhabited zone near Sebkhat Al-Magta, a salt lake along the Libya-Tunisia border. He is barely breathing, and officers try to revive him, gently, with a few drops of water on his lips. Most of the 128 fishing vessels operating in Morocco-controlled waters under the deal are from Spain.ĪL-’ASSAH, Libya: In the unbearable midday heat, a Libyan patrol near the border with Tunisia comes across a black African man collapsed on the reddish-brown desert sand.
Morocco “seeks a partnership of equals” that takes into consideration Morocco’s own fisheries strategy as well as biological factors, he said. “Is the partnership that consists in taking resources and paying afterwards a framework that Morocco wants?.This is an outdated partnership,” he said. “Our initial assessment is positive.the Moroccan government is examining the future of this protocol with the EU,” said Bourita. The European commission appealed the ruling after it issued a joint statement with Morocco saying they would act to ensure continuity of bilateral trade.Ī final verdict has not yet been made and the fisheries deal expires on July 19.Ī Moroccan-EU joint fisheries committee will meet this week in Brussels to assess the four-year deal, Bourita told reporters in Rabat. Morocco regards Western Sahara as its own, while Algeria-backed Polisario rebels have sought to establish an independent state there. The General Court of the European Union in 2021 annulled EU-Morocco trade deals covering farm products and fish because they were agreed without the consent of the people of Western Sahara. RABAT: Morocco wants a new “partnership” to allow EU vessels to operate in waters it controls, Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita said on Wednesday.
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