Moroccans deeply shocked by Tunisian President’s racist remarks

Tunisian President Kais Saied has made extremely hateful and racist remarks against African migrants who arrive in his country on their way to Europe, causing a stir at home and abroad.

After castigating and making racist remarks against African immigrants, who seek refuge in Europe because of poverty, famine and conflicts in their countries, the Tunisian president went so far as to say that Africans were the cause of most of Tunisia’s problems, trying to “Africanize” it and alienate its Arab identity, he was quoted as saying in a Presidency statement.

At Tunisia’s national security council convened on the subject, Saied spoke of “hordes of illegal migrants” whose presence in Tunisia he called a source of “violence, crime and unacceptable acts.” Insisting on “the need to quickly put an end” to this immigration, he equated it with “a desire to make Tunisia just another African country and not a member of the Arab and Islamic world,” using rhetoric close to the “great replacement” theory promoted by the far right in France and in other Western countries.

In Morocco, where African migrants enjoy full social rights and are integrated into the Kingdom’s social fabric, these remarks have prompted consternation. Moroccans reject the remarks made by the Tunisian president against African citizens who are legitimately seeking a better future for themselves and their children.

The Moroccan citizen, if he is not used to meddling in the affairs of a country, was violently shaken by the racist and execrable remarks made by the Tunisian president.

Several other people and organizations slammed Saied’s racist remarks. “It is a racist approach just like the campaigns in Europe… the presidential campaign aims to create an imaginary enemy for Tunisians to distract them from their basic problems,” Ramadan Ben Amor, spokesperson for the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, told Reuters.

The Tunisian president, university professor, should not ignore that migration is an enrichment for the host society and the fact of asserting that Africans are the primary cause of Tunisia’s problems shows a serious ignorance of the Tunisian reality.

Claiming that sub-Saharan migrants threaten the country’s identity is a nameless aberration.

With a simple glance at the world map, the author of these remarks would have realized that Tunisia is already on the African continent. It is as African as Niger, Congo or Tanzania.

On Thursday, Kais Saied backtracked on his racist remarks on Sub- Saharans, telling his Interior Minister that the migrants, legally established in Tunisia, must not fear anything. But the damage is done!