Tunisian president stokes racism against Sub-Saharan migrants

Tunisia’s authoritarian president Kais Saied is pushing conspiracy theories to the limit. After accusing the West of trying to undermine Tunisia’s sovereignty amid an uphill battle to gain a new IMF credit line, he now changed targets to scapegoat poor Sub-Saharan migrants uttering comments that verge on abject racism.

“The undeclared goal of the successive waves of illegal immigration is to turn Tunisia into a purely African country that has no belonging to the Arab and Islamic nations,” he was quoted as saying in a Presidency statement issued after a Security Council meeting.

Tunisia under Saied resort to conspiracy theories in no different than its military-run protector Algeria which has pinned all its troubles on Morocco and Israel accusing the two of all woes in the country from social and economic problems to climate hazards such as the Kabylie fires.

“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.

Saied’s comments angered rights groups which denounced a state-sponsored racism no different than the discriminatory calls inherent to far-right groups.

Running out of time and money to address Tunisia’s shortages and degradation of public services, Kais Saied has relied on security services arbitrarily arresting opposition figures.