The Tunisian authorities have been roundly criticised after President Kais Saied made controversial remarks about black African migrants.
Under the spotlight for several weeks, Tunisia has been accused of being a racist country by several sub-Saharan African nationals who have asked their governments to repatriate them.
After Guinea, Mali, Cote d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso, Senegal is one of the latest West African countries that repatriated their citizens who feared for their lives in the North African country.
“On the instructions of the Head of State (Macky Sall), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Senegalese abroad proceeded, this Thursday 16 March 2023, to repatriate 76 Senegalese, out of the 172 initially registered, who were established in Tunisia and Libya,” said the ministry in a statement.
It added that “these compatriots, who decided to return to Senegal voluntarily, were transported by the national company Air Senegal.”
“They were taken care of on arrival at the Blaise Diagne International Airport (AIBD) by the competent state services, in accordance with the usual procedures put in place in such situations,” said the department headed by Aissata Tall Sall, before “thanking the Tunisian and Libyan authorities for their cooperation, which facilitated the smooth execution of this operation.”
In recent days, the Tunisian authorities have come under strong criticism after President Saied’s comments in February on a supposed campaign to “change the demographic composition of Tunisia” to make it an “African only” country and blur its “Arab-Muslim” character.
The remarks provoked a wave of outrage and protests, significantly damaging the image of the Maghreb country whose first president (1957-1987), Habib Bourguiba, a pan-Africanist, is named after a number of buildings and streets on the continent.
The Chairperson of the African Union Commission (AUC), Chadian Moussa Faki Mahamat, condemned the remarks of the Tunisian head of state, calling on the member states of the organisation to “refrain from any racist hate speech.”
The Senegalese under-20 national team, played Tunisia in the semi-finals of the competition organised in Egypt on Monday 6 March and finally won by the Cubs, outclassed their Tunisian counterpart by a score of three goals to nil.
But the image that most caught the attention of the spectators was the celebration of one of the goals by the young Senegalese, running towards the cameras while pointing to their black skins.
President Saied tried to make up for it by receiving his Guinea-Bissau counterpart Umaro Sissoco Embalo, currently the chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), on 8 March in Tunis.
He took advantage of the meeting to make a lengthy claim to his and his country’s Africanity.
Two days later, Saied, an academic specialist in constitutional law, who came to power in Tunisia in October 2019 with a score of 72.7 percent, spoke by phone with Senegal’s Macky Sall, the current chairman of the AU, who “appreciated the appeasement measures he has taken in the context of the current situation.”
