14 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa drown off Tunisia – coastguard

The Tunisian coast guard introduced on Thursday that 14 migrants from sub-Saharan African nations had drowned and 54 others had been rescued after the boat carrying them sank off the coast of Tunisia.

The boat carrying the migrants sank off the coast of Sfax (central-eastern Tunisia) on Wednesday night time and the coast guard “recovered 14 our bodies of migrants and rescued 54 others,” stated the spokesman for the Tunisian coast guard on its Fb web page.

The shipwreck comes at a time when many migrants from sub-Saharan African nations are looking for to depart Tunisia after Tunisian President Kais Saied made remarks in opposition to unlawful immigration.

On February 21, Saied stated the presence in Tunisia of “hordes” of unlawful immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa was a supply of “violence and crime” and a “felony enterprise” geared toward “altering the demographic composition” of the nation.

After this speech, condemned by NGOs as “racist and hateful”, nationals of sub-Saharan African nations reported an upsurge in assaults in opposition to them and rushed by the dozen to their embassies to be repatriated.

In response to official figures, Tunisia has greater than 21,000 nationals from sub-Saharan African nations, the vast majority of whom are in an irregular state of affairs, which is lower than 0.2% of a complete inhabitants of about 12 million.

Tunisia, a North African nation whose shoreline is lower than 150 km from the Italian island of Lampedusa, often information makes an attempt by migrants to depart for Italy.

In response to official Italian figures, greater than 32,000 migrants, together with 18,000 Tunisians, arrived illegally in Italy from Tunisia in 2022.

In an obvious try and appease after the outcry over his remarks, Mr. Saied stated throughout a gathering Wednesday with the President of Guinea-Bissau Umaro Sissoco Embalo, who was stopping in Tunis, that Africans in Tunisia had been “brothers,” in keeping with a video launched by the Tunisian presidency.

Affirming that the target of his speech was to implement the “Tunisian legality regarding foreigners” and forestall any “parallel jurisdiction to the state’s jurisdictions”, he rejected the “malicious feedback” of those that “wished to interpret the speech to their liking to hurt Tunisia”.

“This case regarding Africans can’t be interpreted by malicious tongues, as they’ve carried out in latest days, as racism. What are they speaking about? They’re rambling,” he added.