Rights group accuses Algeria of rounding up sub-Saharan Africans

31 Octobre 2017

Algiers, Algeria,  October 31 (Infosplusgabon) -  Algerian authorities have been rounding up sub-Saharan Africans in and around Algiers and have deported more than 3,000 to Niger since August 25, 2017, without giving them an opportunity to challenge their expulsion, a human rights group said on Tuesday.

Human Rights Watch said in a statement that those expelled include migrants who have lived and worked for years in Algeria, pregnant women, families with newborn babies, and about 25 unaccompanied children.

“Nothing justifies rounding up people based on their skin colour, and then deporting them en masse,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “A country’s power to control its borders is not a licence to treat people like criminals or to assume they have no right to be there because of their race or ethnicity.”

Human Rights Watch said its sources in Algiers said detained initially included 15 refugees and asylum seekers. All were later released after the authorities ascertained their status.

According to the statement, Ahmed Ouyahia, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s cabinet chief, said on 7 July that migrants are a “source of criminality and drugs”, and that the authorities need to protect the Algerian population from this “chaos”. On 11 July, Foreign Affairs Minister Abdelkader Messahel said that migrants “represent a threat to national security”.

The human rights watchdig said during successive waves of arrests, security forces rounded up sub-Saharan migrants on the streets, on construction sites where many work, and in their homes.

The migrants were taken to a facility in Zeralda, a suburb of the capital, where they spent one to three days in crowded halls with no mattresses and little to eat during the day. They were then bused 1,900 kilometres south to a camp in Tamanrasset, then expelled to Niger.

Human Rights Watch said three sub-Saharan migrants interviewed separately by phone said that they believe gendarmes targeted them based on their skin color. “When black workers there saw the gendarmes, they tried to flee but the gendarmes chased them and forced them into the van,” said one migrant who was arrested earlier and forced into the gendarme’s van. “They arrested seven men.”

A non-governmental organization based in the Malian city of Gao said that several Malians were also expelled at the Algeria-Mali border, an insecure region with minimal government presence where armed groups, including some linked to Al-Qaeda, are active.

Those expelled have included both Nigeriens and hundreds of citizens of other countries such as Mali, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, and Guinea – all nationals of sub-Saharan countries, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which runs an assistance program for migrants in Agadez, Niger.

The statement said IRC told Human Rights Watch that migrants were expelled in successive waves. The first convoy arrived in Agadez on 25 August, and the most recent one on 25 October. The IRC registered 3,232 migrants arriving from Algeria, among which 396 were women and 850 children, including the 25 unaccompanied children.

Under international law, Algeria has the authority to control its borders and to remove people not in the country legally, but should give each person an opportunity to challenge their removal. It should not discriminate based on race or ethnicity or subject migrants to arbitrary detention, inhuman and degrading treatment, Human Rights Watch said.

FIN/INFOSPLUSGABON/OUT/GABON 2017

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