In Tunisia, where migrants claim they no longer feel safe after President Kais Saied claimed they posed a demographic threat, over 300 Ivorians were returned on Thursday.
Ibrahim Sy Savane, the Ivory Coast’s ambassador in Tunis, reported that a huge jet that Ethiopian Airlines had chartered was used to fly 287 people, including 21 toddlers, back to Abidjan.
Since chartered flights started in early March, 1,053 Ivorians had been returned from Tunisia in total, Savane told AFP.
On February 21, Saied said that immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa were responsible for an upsurge in “violence and criminality,” claiming that their goal was to “alter the demographic character” of Tunisia and cut it off from the Islamic and Arab cultures.
With a population of 12 million, the 12 million-person nation of Tunisia is home to an estimated 21,000 migrants from other African nations, or 0.2% of the total.
Migrants had reported an increase in racial attacks in the days following Saied’s speech, and many had been kicked out onto the streets by landlords who feared severe fines or jail time for sheltering them.
Many hurried to their embassies to be returned, while those who worked informally in construction and other industries also lost their jobs.
According to Savane, just under 3,000 Ivorians have registered with the embassy for return.
Without a visa, Ivorians can go to Tunisia, where they make up the largest sub-Saharan African population—about 7,000 people.
Many migrants use Tunisia as a launching pad for attempts to go to Europe by sea, although some come to study. Tunis has come under pressure from European governments to stop the migration.
The Italian island of Lampedusa is only 150 kilometres (90 miles) away from some of Tunisia’s coastline.
Since the beginning of March, at least three fatal shipwrecks of migrant boats off the coast of Tunisia have been reported, among them many Ivorians.
According to the spokesman for the Tunisian National Guard, the coastguard has stopped 2,034 migrants since Wednesday, nine of whom are Tunisians, and has also found seven more migrants’ bodies.
After their boat sank near Tunisia on Wednesday, a rights organization reported that five migrants dead and another 28 were missing.
The Ivorian envoy described the situation as “a race against time” and stated that his nation planned to book additional flights for repatriation.
He stated that his goal was “to stop more hopeless people from plunging into the Mediterranean with little prospect of surviving.”
