2023-05-01 16:59:12
Between the beginning of March and the end of April 2023, more than 7,000 sub-Saharan migrants were expelled from Algeria to the small border village of Assamaka in Niger. The very high number of expulsions and the increased frequency of these exceed the reception capacities of the single IOM transit centre. Result ! More than 5,000 distraught and deeply traumatized non-Nigerian migrants roam the streets of Assamaka. Chronicle of a humanitarian and human rights crisis.
Assamaka is a small village located in the far north of Niger, some 200 km from the mining town of Arlit and only about fifteen km from the Algerian border. It is a village of around 2,500 inhabitants which has received waves of migrants caught in the nets of the Algerian security forces since the beginning of March until the end of April 2023.
After being dragged from detention center to detention center, expropriated of all their property and having suffered the worst abuse, these West African migrants are thrown like filth 15 km from Assamaka. A place called Point-zero, which is marked by a metal stele. These migrants are dumped there at night, with the only compass being the dim lights of the village in the distance.
The strongest reach the village before dawn and give the alert to the local NGOs so that they can mobilize to pick up the weakest who have not been able to cover the distance on foot. They are generally women, children and also men, injured, as many have been arriving lately.
Arrested and detained in inhuman conditions
These migrants, we meet them through the wide sandy streets of Assamaka. The shaggy hair, the scruffy and dusty clothes, often with several empty cans of mineral water, slung over shoulder straps, attached to each other. It is the quest for the most expensive commodity of the moment: drinking water. Starving, these migrants are, but virtually all have returned empty-handed because, according to accounts in the hands of the Algerian SDF, they were not only martyred and abused, they were robbed of all their money and everything they needed. they had precious.
Even their phones have been confiscated, putting them in a situation where they cannot even afford to eat or contact their loved ones to give them news.
Ibrahima Baldé is one of these migrants. He left his native Guinea with the hope of an entire family. A family that counted on him to get her out of the extreme poverty in which she was plunged.
He traveled thousands of km and braved many dangers to reach Algeria. He intended to build up a small jackpot that would allow him to continue his journey to Europe without too much difficulty, considered by him and many of his congeners, as El Dorado.
Unfortunately, he was “snatched up” along with other foreigners, mainly sub-Saharans. According to the latter, “this is where the real problems began for him”.
Carried from detention center to detention center, until they took the destination of Assamaka, where they arrived in Convoy 12 (Editor’s note: the convoy of April 12), he and his congeners suffered the worst abuse and the worst humiliations.
Unfortunately, during his arrest, he received a truncheon in the jaw, which to this day prevents him from eating and expressing himself properly.
This account by Ibrahima Baldé is similar to that of the thousands of migrants expelled from Algeria and who found themselves in Niger. All denounce the inhuman conditions in which they were arrested and detained.
left to themselves
These thousands of deportees are now trying to survive in total destitution in Assamaka, calling for help from their respective countries to repatriate them because, explains Keita Mohamed, another Guinean national, “what we have experienced, it’s just hell on earth”. “We have been tortured, robbed of our property, there are serious injuries among us and even deaths,” he explains, his voice charged with emotion.
What the Algerians do not understand, continues the latter, bitterly, “is that we did not leave our homes to live the good life. We were born poor, we grew up poor, but we refuse to die poor. If we go out, it’s just to fight so that our tomorrow is the best”.
Among those expelled from Algeria, there are 27 nationalities, mainly sub-Saharan Africans. Not all of them were able to benefit from the care of the IOM, the vast majority remained outside the center and scattered around the village, occupying the smallest plot, the smallest space that could serve as shelter. .
The storefronts of other people’s houses, along the walls, public spaces, unoccupied plots. In their quest for space, they even stormed the village’s Integrated Care Center (CSI). CSI in which they have taken up residence even on the roof, between the solar panels supplying electrical energy and the slab where the more adventurous find refuge in this great heat where the thermometer displays 46° in the shade. Even around the CSI incinerator, a group follows the movement of the sun to take advantage of the shade at all times.
In short, we see them everywhere in Assamaka! Among them are many children, including Issoufou, a 14-year-old boy who left his native Guinea three months ago without informing his parents.
With a group of comrades, he passed through Mali to reach Algeria. To make matters worse, he was also rounded up. Today, despite all the courage he shows, when you talk to him, he cannot help but mention the cases of death he has witnessed. In this case that of this expelled who died while trying to jump from the bus which took them to Assamaka. He was trying to escape his “persecutors”, he had refused to be taken back to Niger. He knew the risk he was running, but he tried to escape anyway.
The water problem is certainly the biggest problem facing the population of Assamaka and secondarily the migrants.
Indeed, according to the explanations of Mr. Mahamane Soghi, spokesperson for the populations of Assamaka, the village has three boreholes. The first is out of service, the second, built by UNICEF is assigned to the service of the CSI and the third, built by the settlers, is used to fill the water tower which serves the water pipes of the village.
Unfortunately, this water is unfit for consumption. This is why most people in Assamaka only drink mineral water from Algeria. The only ones forced to drink this water are the migrants who cannot do otherwise.
In the quest for this water, although unfit for consumption and which causes gastric problems of all kinds, the migrants are forced to come out of their hiding places and walk up and down the village. Because, it must be specified, the boreholes are often out of order. And it happens that we meet them in small groups of two, three, or even more by affinity or quite simply by nationality.
Rights blithely violated
In December 2014, Niger signed an agreement with Algeria for the repatriation of Niger nationals present in this country. On the pretext of this bilateral agreement, Algeria has extended expulsions to nationals of third countries, even of Sub-Saharan Africa. These expulsions have intensified affecting non-Africans and even people with up-to-date travel documents.
In doing so, and given the many accounts of the expellees themselves, it is clear that Algeria has blithely violated and continues to violate the rights of these people on the move. In particular the rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and many other international and regional texts relating to human rights. In this case, we can mention the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) and the United Nations Convention of 1990 which have as common denominator, the absolute prohibition of collective expulsions, torture and other abuse.
A glimmer of hope
Even if organizations such as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) for their health care, or even the IOM, for reception and accommodation, do their best to alleviate the suffering of these migrants, these efforts remain insufficient. As for the IOM, it only has a capacity of 1,500 places and as far as MSF is concerned, it has practically consumed its stock of pharmaceutical products for six months.
Today, thanks to a newcomer to Assamaka, in this case the Italian NGO, COOPI, the situation is somewhat improving. Indeed, barely installed, it undertook, in an emergency, to build, with local materials and local labor, two camps of 40 hangars that can each accommodate 1,500 people. That is 3,000 migrants that it intends to take care of thanks to the emergency support fund of the European Union which supports it to the tune of two million euros for the next three months.
In addition, it offers a daily meal to each of the migrants who are hosted in their shelters, in addition to the 2,000 liters of water it offers them twice a day.
If we do the math, if we add these 3,000 newly taken care of people to the 1,500 received in the transit center of the IOM, that makes only 4,500 taken care of migrants. There are still two to three thousand who still remain in the streets and who continue to suffer martyrdom. And this, all the more so since Algeria has not given up on its massive expulsions to Assamaka.
A headache for the Nigerien authorities
It must be said that this issue of migrants expelled from Algeria and returned to Niger is worrying to the highest level. So much so that a government mission made up of the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Public Health, accompanied by several humanitarian partners, went to Assamaka on April 19, 2023 to seek to find a solution.
Thus, despite the difficulties experienced by the country, in particular insecurity and terrorist attacks, with its corollary of internally displaced persons or refugees, the government must seriously address this issue of migrants turned back en masse and without distinction of nationality towards the Niger.
This is all the more urgent as this situation has awakened long-buried anti-migrant resentment. An anti-migrant feeling that risks undermining all the efforts made, especially by the populations, to accept these travelers.
It is also necessary to specify that on the side also of these migrants the anger growls and those did not hesitate to go out and to express their anger during the passage of the governmental mission. History of being heard but above all, history of putting a little more pressure so that a lasting solution is found, to the delight of the migrants themselves but also of the host populations.
Seydou Assane
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