Nationals were repatriated on board Air Senegal planes. MANDEL NGAN
The Senegalese government said on Friday that it had repatriated 76 compatriots from Tunisia and neighboring Libya the day before. Senegal is the latest sub-Saharan country to repatriate nationals after comments made on February 21 by Tunisian President Kais Saied. He said that the presence of “hordesof illegal immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa was a source ofviolence and crimes» and came under a «criminal enterprise” aiming to “change the demographic composition” from the country.
These words were followed by multiple attacks on immigrants and hundreds of them demanded to return to their embassies. The Senegalese government had opened a crisis unit and a register to identify candidates for return.
Inaccurate count
Of 172 people registered and established in Tunisia and Libya, 76 were repatriated Thursday by a flight from the national company Air Senegal, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a press release published on Friday on social networks. The ministry does not specify the number of people repatriated from each of the two countries. Nor does it explain why nationals were brought back from Libya.
Libya has been mired in a major political crisis since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 after 42 years of dictatorship. Unlike neighbors like Guinea or Mali, Senegal has been discreet about repatriation. The Senegalese authorities had banned a protest demonstration in front of the Tunisian embassy in Dakar on March 4 against the words of the Tunisian president.
Senegalese President Macky Sall reported on March 10 on Twitter that he had met the same day with the Tunisian president. “We discussed issues of common interest. I appreciated the calming measures he took in the context of the current situationhe was content to say.