Mediterranea: ‘We call for a rescue intervention by international bodies. The Italian government should take action to prevent deaths'

Location of deportees:

35*35’54.1”N 8*23’29.3”E
36*35’45.5”N 8*23’00.9”E

Our activists, Luca Casarini and Don Mattia Ferrari, were reached by a request for help from one of the deportees, who managed to send the GPS location of the place of abandonment. The people were abandoned along Tunisia's western border in inaccessible and isolated areas in the Haidra and Djebel Ghorra areas, without any means of subsistence, a few kilometres from the Algerian border.

After this message, we have not been able to communicate with him again. From our solidarity networks in Tunisia, such as Refugees in Tunisia, comes confirmation of a maxi deportation and deportation that took place from the port of Sfax, at the end of rescue operations at sea, conducted between Sunday 16 and Monday 17 March, for several people attempting to cross to Italy. The operation, conducted by the Tunisian Garde Nationale and military from the Tunisian Ministry of the Interior, mobilised 11 buses, on which refugees and survivors of the sea were loaded after being searched and whose telephones, water, and basic necessities were confiscated. The procedure is the established one following the agreements between the European Union and Tunisia signed at the urging of the Italian government: migrants were caught at sea while trying to reach Italy and Europe, were brought back ashore and later deported.

‘In recent months, we have received several phone calls from groups of people who had been deported,’ Luca and Fr Mattia recount, ’and often the traces of them were lost. The desert, or the uninhabited areas along the border, have become a huge cemetery, like the sea. We ask the authorities and all those who have the possibility to intervene to help the women, men and children who are victims of this maxi-displacement'.