Facing attacks, arrests and discrimination in Tunisia, sub-Saharan African migrants are fleeing the country as a government crackdown on illegal immigration spirals into vigilante violence against black people.
In the weeks since the Tunisian government began rounding up sub- Saharan Africans unable to furnish residency papers – and since President Kais Saied made racist and xenophobic remarks echoing the white-nationalist “great replacement” conspiracy theory – migrants have been attacked on the streets, thrown out of their homes, and suspended or fired from their jobs.
Saied, who was elected in 2019 and has since consolidated power and presided over a crackdown on his critics, turned his ire in February on sub-Saharan Africans in the country, accusing them of taking part in a conspiratorial plot to change Tunisia’s demographics to make it “only an
