By Ebi Kesiena
Gambia has repatriated 40 citizens from Tunisia after bringing home another group from Libya following maltreatment.
According to a foreign ministry spokeswoman, the repatriated Gambian citizens were air-lifted out of Tunisia overnight, a day after bringing home another group from Libya.
The group, who returned to the Gambia voluntarily, left Tunisia Friday and arrived in the capital Banjul around 2:00 am (0200 GMT), the spokeswoman said. The flight had been organised by the government in collaboration with the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Also, the spokeswoman noted that the West African nation had repatriated 87 of its citizens from Libya in related circumstance.
Heritage Times HT recalls that early July, Human Rights Watch accused Tunisia of expelling hundreds of sub-Saharan Africans to a desert area near the Libyan border following violence against migrants in the city of Sfax.
In a statement several days later, the Gambian government said it was working to evacuate citizens from the North African country. Earlier this year, West African nations, including Burkina Faso, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali and Senegal, repatriated hundreds of citizens from Tunisia amid a wave of racist attacks there.
It followed a tirade by the Tunisian president in February, accusing hordes of illegal migrants from sub-Saharan Africa for crime and alleging a “criminal plot” to change the country’s demographic makeup.
However, the Gambian authorities said in early July, it had repatriated nearly 300 migrants between June 21 and July 4, over half of whom had been stranded in Libya. The rest had been intercepted on boats in Senegalese, Mauritanian and Moroccan waters.
