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Politics
+ Equality

Crackdown on Black Africans Fuels Attacks and Rebuke in Tunisia

Rights groups accuse President Kais Saied of stoking xenophobia to deflect from a growing economic and political crisis

Sub-Saharan migrants gather at the Ivory Coast embassy in Tunis on Feb. 28.
Sub-Saharan migrants gather at the Ivory Coast embassy in Tunis on Feb. 28.Photographer: FETHI BELAID/AFP
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After Tunisia’s president blamed African migrants for a rise in violent crime and threatening the country’s Arab identity, 42-year-old Francois had a knock on his front door. 

It was his landlord trying to kick him out, along with his wife and two-year-old son, wrongly saying he could no longer offer lodgings to Black migrant tenants as a government-sanctioned crackdown against illegal residents escalated in the North African nation.