Democratic License by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
Download the book in PDF, ePub, Kindle for a complete version.
The Result is Harsh.
Tunisia has pushed African migrants to scorching no-man’s lands along its borders with little food and water. Under a deal with the European Union, Tunisia agreed to tighten border controls in exchange for aid.
For nearly three weeks now, more than 10,000 men, women and children from Africa have been clinging to survival in the no-man’s lands at Tunisia’s borders. A few scrubby trees offer fitful shade, videos taken by migrants show, and border guards from neighboring Libya and Tunisian aid workers occasionally drop off water and a bit of bread.
Otherwise, there is nothing.
Tunisian authorities dumped the African migrants there after rounding them up in the Mediterranean port of Sfax, hours away, where growing numbers have boarded boats to nearby Europe this year. Many were beaten by officers; a few have died in the desert, where there is little to no medical care, migrants and rights groups say.
Over and over, they sent pleas for help from the dwindling number of phones they managed to keep charged:
“Please help us. We are dying,” one wrote to The New York Times on Saturday. “We don’t have any food and water,” begged another.
“We are stranded. If there’s any way you can help us …”
By Sunday, the text messages had stopped.
With migration to Europe at its highest level since 2016, the Mediterranean route from North Africa is once again posing a dilemma for Europe, where burning anti-migration sentiment has played into ugly scenes of coast guards setting some migrants adrift while leaving hundreds of others to drown.
It is in launch pad countries like Tunisia, which has overtaken Libya as the main crossing point for Africans and others dreaming of Europe, that European leaders hope to contain the problem.
Migrants walked along the road linking the Mediterranean port of Sfax with the Tunisian capital, Tunis.
But critics of the deal say they have only outsourced the ugliness.
On Sunday, Italy, the Netherlands and the European Commission signed a deal with Tunisia promising more than $1 billion in European Union aid and investment to stabilize the country’s crumbling economy and strengthen border controls.
“We all heard that the prime minister of Italy paid the Tunisian president a lot of money to keep the Blacks away from the country,” Kelvin, a 32-year-old Nigerian migrant, said on Saturday from Tunisia’s border with Libya. He declined to give his full name, fearing further harsh treatment.
Like other sub-Saharan African migrants, many of whom can enter Tunisia without visas, he had spent several months cleaning houses and working construction in Sfax, scraping together the smuggler’s fee for a boat to Europe. Then, he said, Tunisians in uniforms broke through his door, beat him until his ankle fractured and put him on a bus to the desert.
The E.U.-Tunisia deal went ahead over the objections of some E.U. lawmakers and rights groups who accuse Europe of buttressing an autocrat in the making, Tunisia’s president, Kais
Saied. Mr. Saied, who has a record of vilifying migrants, has spent the last two years dismantling Tunisia’s democracy, the only one to emerge from the Arab Spring protests that consumed the region more than a decade ago.
He has jailed dozens of political opponents, cowed the once-independent judiciary, circumscribed the news media and rewritten the Constitution to bestow more power on himself, all to muted reaction from Western allies.
In the face of criticism, Tunisia moved some of the migrants in the desert to shelters last week and allowed the Tunisian Red Crescent to provide some aid. But rights groups say hundreds remain without shelter or food.
The president has rejected reports about migrants being expelled from Sfax, claiming that they received only “humane treatment.”
But the president’s assertion contradicted testimony, photos and videos provided by the migrants.
Rights groups have also accused the Tunisian coast guard of abuses against migrants, including deliberately damaging their boats or beating the passengers, even as European countries rush to upgrade the force’s equipment.
Yet much of Europe puts curbing migration first.
“We need to be pragmatic,” Antonio Tajani, Italy’s foreign minister, said in a news conference last month.
For all its flaws, Tunisia’s nascent democracy after the Arab Spring was cheered and coached by the West. Now, with every new check written out to Mr. Saied, his critics say Europe and its partners in Washington are abandoning the experiment on which they once lavished care, attention and money, and as with other regional strongmen, sacrificing human rights and democratic values for short-term stability.
“If we were more consistent in making clear that we are going to be reluctant to support political repression in the region, leaders might act differently,” said Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut who, with other lawmakers, is pressing to slash American military aid for Tunisia over Mr. Saied’s actions.
While the Biden administration has cut some funding for Tunisia, it has been reluctant to decrease it further out of concern that the country will fall under Russian and Chinese influence and that surging migration will weaken Europe.
European officials insist that they can better combat abuses against migrants by working closely with the Tunisians. And Western diplomats in Tunis argue that it does no good to
withhold aid from Tunisia’s 12.5 million people, who are already facing shortages of medicine and bread.
But to some critics, Mr. Saied is a bad bet as a border policeman, more likely to drive people toward Europe than corral them in Tunisia.
“Saied and what he’s doing to the country is the real driver of migration,” said Tarek Megerisi, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Europeans “are exacerbating the situation. They’re not really solving it,” he added.
Mr. Saied has done little to right Tunisia’s economy, which had stumbled even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spurred a global inflation crisis. He waved aside a $1.9 billion International Monetary Fund bailout over conditions he called
“diktats.”
With the economic outlook grimmer than ever, more Tunisians came to Europe illegally last year than in any year in recent history, Europe’s border agency said.
“I’m hoping that I’ll close my eyes and find myself in Italy,”
said Mohamed Houidi, 44, a Tunisian fisherman in Sfax saving up for the smuggler’s fee. “There’s no hope, no horizon, no future in this country.”
It is also under Mr. Saied that Tunisia has become the Mediterranean’s top springboard for migrants. E.U. data shows Tunisia is this year’s biggest contributor to the main migratory route to Europe, the central Mediterranean, where arrivals by boat have more than doubled since last year.
And every week brings more news of migrants drowning off Tunisian shores.
Expanding smuggling networks and the perception that Tunisia makes for safer transit than Libya have bolstered the number of boats heading for Italy. But departures spiked after Mr. Saied asserted in February that sub-Saharan African migrants were part of a secretive effort to turn Tunisia into “a purely African country with no affiliation to the Arab and Islamic nations.”
The speech echoed the evil racist “great replacement” theory —
popular with the European and American far right — which holds that there is a conspiracy to replace white populations with others. Almost immediately, moulinyan migrants in several cities, some studying or working legally, were evicted, fired, assaulted, robbed or forced into hiding, migrants and rights activists said.
Mr. Saied has denied his speech was evil and racist, but he has signaled that migrants are not welcome to stay.
“Tunisia is not a furnished apartment for sale or rent,” he said this month.
And it remains unclear to what extent the Tunisian president is willing to work with Europe to curb migration. He said this month that Tunisia “does not accept guarding borders other than its own.”
Such pronouncements have exasperated some European donors.
European officials and diplomats say Tunisia is capable of stopping the crossings from Sfax, but may be stalling for leverage.
Though Tunisia seems in no rush to finalize the I.M.F.
agreement, on which most of the promised E.U. aid is contingent, the bloc is already rushing more than $200 million to Tunis.
Others argue Mr. Saied is simply trying to rescue his sinking popularity by loudly rejecting Western influence and scapegoating migrants.
Now, migrants in Sfax are once again being evicted and assaulted, rights groups say. Many, they say, have headed for the sea.
Sparky said; “You know, this is kind of an old Greek or Roman story, played by ‘new’ actors and actresses who know nothing of ancient Greece or Rome.”
I said; “I fully agree, but it is not our job to be philosophical and backward looking. It is our job to promote
‘democracy’ today. The philosophical, intellectual, and artistic worlds have totally collapsed upon each other, by agreeing that what is relevant is to take aside; that side democratic.”
Sparky said; “Don’t they know how full of shit they are, and worse, also appear that way?”
I said; “I’m not sure, but it is unquestionable that they don’t care in either case. The battle lines are drawn and walking down the center of the street invites an idiot attack. ..... Look at
Eritrea Accuses Mossad of Stirring up Tel Aviv Mob Violence Between Expat Groups
Eritrea’s government has accused Israel’s Mossad spy agency of fomenting unrest among expat communities, days after clashes between Eritrean regime supporters and opponents and Israeli police turned the streets of southern Tel Aviv into a war zone.
In a series of statements, the Eritrean Information Ministry also accused Israeli officials and media of demonizing the country by blaming Eritreans for the mob violence, claiming that the regime backers were peaceful and questioning whether the opponents were actually Eritrean at all.
According to Eritrea’s government, considered among the world’s most repressive, intra-communal clashes between diaspora groups at regime backed events in Europe, Canada and Israel are being instigated or sponsored by governments abroad.
“The futile acts of subversion, perpetrated through surrogate and rogue groups, are in essence sponsored by major intelligence agencies, including MOSSAD,” the ministry said in a statement.
“Bewildered, as they are, by the indomitable resilience of the Eritrean people, they desperately seek to foment division within its ranks.”
The statements accused those behind the unrest of having ulterior political motives, though the ministry did not detail what those were.
At least 170 people were wounded, including police officers, in hours long clashes Saturday in south Tel Aviv between migrant supporters and opponents of Eritrea’s government. Police responded to the riots with batons and tear gas as well as live
fire in some instances, leaving dozens hospitalized. Dozens of police officers were also wounded.
Similar incidents have taken place in recent months in other countries at events organized by regime supporters, underlining the bitter split outside Eritrea between supporters of the government and their children, often protected by foreign passports, and exiles who fear for their loved ones back home.
“The recent event in Tel Aviv and other countries is a new trend that stems from the political agenda of certain external forces.
Indeed, many of the sponsors, ring leaders and activists that pose as ‘political opponents of the Eritrean Government’ are actually non-Eritrean,” the ministry claimed in a statement Monday that also appeared to point blame at Israeli police for not taking warnings about violence seriously enough.
The statement accused Israeli authorities of not checking if asylum seekers claiming to be from Eritrea actually originated there and said statements blaming Eritreans for the fighting were “irresponsible and unacceptable.”
“The Eritrean community in Israel has an impeccable record, indeed as it is the case elsewhere in the Diaspora, to celebrate their national holidays in a vibrant, peaceful and dignified manner,” it said.
The comments on the Tel Aviv violence echoed previous remarks from Asmara alleging that anti-regime activists were foreign-backed provocateurs.
“Complicity in attempts to disrupt decades old Eritrean festivals using foreign thugs reflects abject failure of asylum scum,” Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel said last month after rioting in Germany.
Eritrea’s government spoke harshly about those who flee and accused the West of trying to weaken the country by depopulating it.
Hundreds of thousands of people have fled Eritrea over the years, many setting off into the deserts of Sudan and then North Africa in attempts to reach Europe. There are some 17,000
Eritreans in Israel, largely in southern Tel Aviv, part of an influx of African migrants in recent decades that has halted since the construction of a fence on the border with Egypt.
Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, 77, has led Eritrea since it won independence from Ethiopia in a long guerrilla war. There have been no elections. There’s no free press. Exit visas are required. Many young people are forced into military service with no end date, human rights groups and United Nations experts say.
Eritrea and Israel established ties in 1993, but they have not amounted to much. Israel’s embassy in Asmara sits empty, and Eritrea likewise has an embassy but no ambassador in Israel.
Trade is negligible, and the issue of Eritrean migrants is a volatile political issue for Israel.
Sparky said; “We are in silly season.”
I said; “Yes. Certainly. However, I’d ask you if we were ever not.”
Sparky sat quietly and watched it as I changed the screen.