TUNIS: A young man wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with “Dior,” women clutching babies wrapped in blankets, children bundled in winter coats. All gingerly stepped from rickety boats into the sturdy craft of the Tunisian Maritime National Guard — and away from their dreams of life in Europe.
Cold, wet and heartbroken, they are among hundreds caught daily in overnight sweeps for migrant boats on the Mediterranean Sea.
“Sit down! Sit down! Sit down!” The shouted order confirmed the group was no longer in charge of their destiny. A woman sobbed.
On an overnight expedition with the National Guard last week, The Associated Press witnessed migrants pleading to continue their journeys to Italy in unseaworthy vessels, some taking on water. Over 14 hours, 372 people were plucked from the fragile boats.
Migrants, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, are undertaking the perilous journey in unprecedented numbers. In the first three months of this year, 13,000 migrants were forced from their boats off the eastern Tunisian port city of Sfax, the main launching point. Between 2021 and 2022, the number of migrants heading to Europe, mostly to Italy but also to Malta, nearly doubled.
In a single day in March, a record 2,900 migrants were stopped in the Sfax region, which also includes the coastal city of Mahdia and the Kerkennah Islands, off the Sfax coast, said National Guard Brig. Gen. Sabeur Younes.
Migration to Europe has been on an upward climb, peaking in 2022 to 189,620, according to the International Organization for Migration. That’s the most since 2016, when close to 400,000 left their homelands, and one year after more than 1 million people, mostly Syrians fleeing war, sought refuge in 2015.
For many sub-Saharan Africans — who don’t need a visa to travel to Tunisia — the North African country serves as a stepping stone to Europe, while others come from Libya, which shares a border with Tunisia.
Each night, National Guard vessels comb the waters. Pulling up the dead is the grimmest part of the job. The Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights said that 580 migrants died or disappeared at sea in 2022.
This week, Sfax officials were rushing to bury some 90 bodies washed up on beaches in the Sfax region in recent days, the official TAP news agency reported Tuesday. The morgue at the main hospital is full, making burials critical.
—Agencies
