Open Letter from Tunisia to the Peoples of the world

Migreurop is a co-signatory of this open letter, upon the initiative of Tunisian Solidarity

For Sherifa, Saadia, Saloua, Mohamed, Iyadh, Abderazek, Abdelkarim, Sonia, Mustapha, Ikbal, Imen, Mourad, Rached, and all the unknown victims of the repression of human solidarity in Tunisia.

We, families of the victims of repression, support movements, civil society organizations, human rights defenders, and solidarity-driven citizens, raise our voices today in defense of justice, freedom, dignity, and the full sovereignty of the Tunisian people. We denounce, with the same voice, the worsening violations of human rights in our country — particularly the targeted attacks on independent organizations working to protect the rights of migrants and asylum seekers.

We believe that in countries forced into dependency and governed by authoritarian regimes, the struggle for sovereignty and the struggle for freedom cannot be separated — for what is freedom without the power to decide for oneself? And what is sovereignty worth if it offers neither justice to its inhabitants, nor respect to its citizens, nor dignity to those seeking refuge?

We recall that:

• As decolonial and antizionst struggles intensify, as devastating wars are ravaging our region, driving entire populations to flee in search of refuge or escape;
• As neo-colonial processes accelerate under the leadership of the global imperialist system — seizing lands and resources, destroying territories, and entrapping the peoples of the South in poverty;
• As the effects of climate change worsen and pollution increases, causing alarming ecological breakdowns with dramatic social, economic, and environmental consequences across the Greater Sahara;

today, thousands of women, men, and children cross borders at great personal risk, stripped of everything, departing from Syria, Senegal, Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Morocco, Cameroon, Tunisia... all seeking safety and dignity.

In response, Europe raises its shields and pushes its borders southward, outsourcing the brutal management of a racist and inhumane deportation process. Hence, every violation is permitted — even funded.

In these conditions, fishing and herding communities, humanitarian organizations, local associations, independent media, and the lawyers defending victims of harassment are on the front lines of efforts to "humanize" these tragic situations, each within their means: providing emergency medical and humanitarian aid; listening to survivors and recording their testimonies; retrieving the bodies from anonymity; reporting the missing and so on.

These acts are now criminalized by a regime that, in defiance of its national and international commitments, escalates arrests under the pretexts of conspiracy, foreign collusion, or money laundering.

The Tunisian regime has engaged in a deliberate strategy of suppressing dissent (see note), which must be understood in light of two major factors: the country’s deepening debt crisis and the recent signing of a memorandum of understanding with the European Union. Through its actions, the regime reveals its prioritization of financial commitments to creditors over its responsibilities to its own people — and over its human and fraternal obligations to sister nations and allied peoples of Tunisia.

We affirm that:

• Our Southern societies urgently need vibrant democratic spaces that guarantee rights and freedoms. These spaces are essential to transformative struggles and to the emergence of economic and social alternatives rooted in sovereignty.
• The conflicts and inequalities that drive people to flee their countries cannot be resolved within a system that perpetuates war, dispossession, and destruction in the South to preserve fragile social peace in the North — for the profit of a privileged few.
• What truly prevents countries like Tunisia from retaining their working populations, achieving prosperity, building social peace, and full sovereignty, is the burden of debt and the imposition of failing economic models and unequal trade with the North.
• The entire system designed to track migrants, block them in North Africa, register them, detain them, and force them into repatriation is yet another vicious cycle — one that will only lead to further violations and pollution at best, and the flourishing of new criminal networks at worst.

For all these reasons, and on the occasion of June 20, World Refugee Day, we call on comrades in African, Arab, regional and international organizations, movements, communities, associations and various civil dynamics to sign this call for a convergence of solidarity before June 20.

We also call on them to:

FOR ORGANIZATIONS

• Sign and circulate this CALL FOR SOLIDARITY CONVERGENCE (form following this link);
• Mark World Refugee Day, on June 20, by honoring and acknowledging the defenders of refugee rights in Tunisia;
• Join the urgent action launched by Amnesty International: Tunisia: Human Rights Defenders Arbitrarily Detained;
• Throughout the month of June, dedicate spaces, actions, or activities to dismantling racist and securitarian narratives, and to promoting rights-based, transnationally solidaristic discourse rooted in the shared memory of Global South struggles;

FOR INDIVIDUALS AND ORGANIZATIONS

• Publicly express their support for the victims of the criminalization of solidarity with refugees and migrants in Tunisia through their own communication platforms;
• Demand, by all civil, institutional, and diplomatic means, the release of detainees; amplify their voices and those of their families, and echo their mobilizations;
• Continue supporting the Tunisian people’s ongoing struggle for freedom, justice, and sovereignty, in a spirit of convergence and solidarity.

Please share with us events and photo by email on: contact@tunisiansolidarity.org , or using our Facebook pages:

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