Tunisia’s President Vilifies Migrants From Sub-Saharan Africa

Moussa Osman had been in hiding — his family panicked, his appetite gone — since Tunisia’s president declared migrants from other parts of Africa pawns in a “criminal plot” to make his predominantly Arab and Muslim nation “a purely African country.”

The next day, Mr. Osman, a 35-year-old former car salesman supporting two children back home in violence-wracked northern Nigeria, lost his construction job after the company said it could no longer employ migrants who had come to Tunisia illegally. Then, he said, his landlord started talking about evicting him, worried he would be penalized for having migrants on the property.

On Sunday, a group of Tunisians broke into Mr. Osman’s apartment, beat up the migrants he was living with and stole their passports and cellphones. By Monday afternoon, he felt he had no choice but to risk a taxi ride to the Nigerian Embassy in Tunis, the capital, hoping to secure some thin protection from a campaign of arrests that migrant associations and Tunisian rights groups say has swept up hundreds of Black foreigners over the last month.

“I am a poor person, a poor migrant living here in peace,” he said outside the embassy, where other Nigerians had begun camping, fearing for their safety. “I left my children in a very difficult situation, and here I find myself in another critical situation.”

Nineteen months after President Kais Saied instituted one-man rule in his North African nation, derailing the only democracy to survive the Arab Spring revolts, he has shaken the country once again with an ever-widening purge in recent weeks that analysts and critics say appears increasingly fueled by paranoia, conspiracy theories and authoritarian urges.

At Mr. Saied’s direction, the authorities have come for some of Tunisia’s most prominent politicians, journalists, activists, judges and others who have failed to bow to his wishes, accusing them of conspiring against the state. More than 20 such people have been arrested or placed under investigation since Feb. 11, including a well-known democracy advocate and Islamist politician on Tuesday, adding to the Saied opponents already jailed or facing prosecution.

But even critics were shocked by Mr. Saied’s Feb. 21 tirade against migrants from other parts of Africa, in which he openly mined what was already a deep vein of discrimination and prejudice against dark-skinned people in Tunisia.

“The unspoken goal behind these successive waves of irregular migration is to consider Tunisia a purely African country, with no affiliation to the Arab and Islamic nations,” he said, accusing the migrants of fomenting crime and violence.

His remarks, seemingly inspired by a xenophobic political party that supports him, echoed the white-supremacist “great replacement” theory popular with the European and American far right, which contends that there is a secret effort to replace white populations with others.

In the days after, workers and students from sub-Saharan Africa have been fired, thrown out of their homes, banned from public transportation and assaulted, according to rights groups.

After seizing power in July 2021, Mr. Saied promised he had no intention of becoming a dictator. For opponents, activists and a rising number of Tunisians who were once content to wait and see if he could turn the country around, however, the spasm of arrests and increasingly corrosive words showed a leader embracing a grimmer autocracy than many had imagined possible.

“When you say something that violent in a society that is already racist, it’s playing with fire,” said Salsabil Chellali, the Tunisia director for Human Rights Watch. “The opposition, civil society, lawyers, media and now migrants — this is really a higher gear that he’s shifted into recently. The worst that we were expecting is happening.”

Though Mr. Saied’s support had already splintered thanks to a free-falling economy, the upheaval in recent days has mobilized some Tunisians who were still torn between wariness of the president and loathing of the rivals he ejected from power, whom many blame for the economic stagnation and political paralysis of the last decade.

Hundreds of people marched in support of migrants in Tunis last weekend, and several anti-Saied factions have called for a major demonstration against the president on Sunday. Among them is a powerful national trade union, known by its French initials U.G.T.T. One of the union’s officers was recently arrested because he helped organize a strike.

“The ‘let’s wait and see’ party was the biggest one, and all of those who were in the wait-and-see party are no longer in the wait-and-see party,” said Thameur Mekki, the editor of Nawaat, an independent Tunisian media outlet. “After his speech about migrants, they said, no, it’s not possible to let the guy do what he wants.”

Tunisia’s foreign ministry has accused critics, including the African Union, the United States and France, of misinterpreting the president’s words. On Friday, Mr. Saied denied that his speech was racist, asserting that legal migrants had nothing to fear. Nevertheless, he repeated his claims about a conspiracy to effect a demographic change.

Tunisia, with a population of about 12 million, is home to an estimated 20,000 sub-Saharan Africans, many of whom crossed into Tunisia illegally for the menial jobs that Tunisians often reject. Others work or study legally.

A coalition of civil society groups that have banded together to defend migrants said it has received nearly 200 requests for food, shelter or other necessities since Saturday from both groups. But it said the true number of people affected was far greater, as some calls represented a request for several households, while others had not known to call. Some Black Tunisians have also reported a rise in harassment recently based on their skin color.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that, “following the instructions of the president,” it was dealing with foreigners “according to Tunisian law.” The foreign minister said the authorities were not to blame for other Tunisians’ discriminatory behavior.

But Mr. Saied’s speech was only the most jolting in a long series of attacks on the many people he has vilified — critics say scapegoated — for Tunisia’s troubles.

Last month, Mr. Saied compared the targets of his politically motivated arrests to “cancer cells,” blaming them for surging inflation and the shortages of basic goods, from sugar to bottled water, that have plagued Tunisians since last year.

“Anyone who dares to acquit them is their accomplice,” he said recently, in a message aimed at the judiciary.

Not that the president has faced much resistance from judges.

He has stocked the formerly independent council that oversees the judiciary with allies and unilaterally fired 57 judges and prosecutors over corruption accusations, ignoring a court order to reinstate 49. Two more judges were arrested last month.

Mr. Saied still enjoys some support, according to analysts and interviews with voters. These days, however, it is nothing like the near-universal euphoria that greeted his initial power grab.

Mr. Saied has done little either to fix the economy or clean up corruption, as Tunisians had hoped.

Weakened and frustrated, Mr. Saied is lashing out because “he sees a threat coming from everywhere — from within, from the opposition, from outside the country, Europeans, Americans,” said Mohamed Dhia Hammami, a Tunisian political analyst.

One early casualty of Mr. Saied’s campaign against dissent was Yassine Ayari, a former lawmaker who fled to Paris after being prosecuted over blog posts criticizing the president.

“There is no good scenario for Tunisia,” Mr. Ayari said this week. “There was a generation that believed in democracy, believed in change, paid a high price, and now they say there’s absolutely nothing we can do.”