Tunisia tensions: African migrants in Sfax targeted, dozens expelled
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Transcript
00:00 [shouting]
00:04 Tuesday night in Tunisia, several migrants were evacuated
00:06 under police protection from their homes in Sfax.
00:08 They were heckled by locals as they left.
00:10 Others were taken in buses to an unknown destination.
00:13 These tense nights followed the death of Tunisian Nizar Amri
00:16 following clashes with sub-Saharan migrants on Monday night.
00:19 Tensions were at their highest at Amri's funeral on Tuesday afternoon.
00:23 I was in the street where the crime happened.
00:27 I went to look for my bike.
00:28 I was about 200 meters away and look at my condition.
00:31 Others were hit. What's going on in the country? Where are we going?
00:34 Three migrants have been arrested and Sfax prosecutors are investigating.
00:37 Racist tensions have been escalating over the last few months.
00:40 Tunisians stabbed a migrant from Benin at the end of May
00:43 and there have been several clashes in residential neighborhoods in the last two weeks.
00:46 Locals are increasingly unhappy about the flow of foreigners
00:49 passing through on their way to Italy.
00:51 Authorities are trying to head off further violence.
00:54 We're trying to re-establish order.
00:57 We're trying to prosecute all the people involved,
00:59 whether they are Tunisians or Africans,
01:01 because all people must comply with Tunisian law.
01:04 Wednesday in the city we meet several migrants who fled the xenophobic attacks
01:08 or who were chased from their housing because of mounting racist sentiment.
01:11 Many have been forced onto the streets.
01:13 20-year-old Aboubakar from Sierra Leone agreed to speak with us.
01:16 Well, the situation right now is not good because
01:19 there's some Arab guys went and attacked us.
01:22 They raped our... the black girls, stole our money.
01:26 They harm us. They also attack our things, so it's not good.
01:30 Amid the violence, some migrants have gone to Sfax's train station
01:33 to try to escape to the capital, Tunis, and demand help from their embassies.
01:37 You go for car, you cannot have car.
01:39 So we also, we decide to run for us to come and to take the train
01:43 for us to go to Tunis for our safety because our life is in danger.
01:47 Off camera, some say they fear deportation
01:50 and being abandoned at the Libyan border if they are arrested,
01:53 something that's happened to migrants in Tunisia before.