How Algerian govt arrested and expelled hundreds of refugees

Algerian authorities have rounded up more than 1,400 sub-Saharan migrants and deported many of them to Niger, according to Human Rights Watch.

The organisation said the operation started on December 1, and migrants in Algiers, capital of the country, were targeted.

“A mass and summary deportation of migrants, including men and women who may have fled persecution or have worked for years in Algeria, would violate their rights,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

“The right of a country to control its borders is not a license for lawlessness.”

Those forcibly transported to Tamanrasset, in southern Algeria, include some registered refugees and asylum seekers, as well as migrants who have lived and worked for years in Algeria.

It is not clear if any refugees or asylum seekers were among those deported.

Human Rights Watch said convoys of expelled migrants traveled through the town of Arlit, in northern Niger, and later in the city of Agadez, further south.

“On the afternoon of December 8, authorities in Tamanrasset told the migrants who were still being held there that they were free to return north. It is not clear if this decision covered all of those who had been forcibly transported there,” read a report of the agency.

As a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, Algeria is barred from forcibly returning any recognised refugee, asylum seeker, or any other foreigner to a place where they would face a threat of being persecuted, tortured, or subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment. The claims of anyone expressing such fears should be examined in full, and fair refugee status determination procedures should be completed before anyone can be deported.

In addition to being a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, Algeria is also party to the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, which prohibits collective expulsions of migrant workers and their families and requires that each expulsion be examined and decided upon individually.

The convention applies to all migrant workers and their families, irrespective of their status.

Authorities took the sub-Saharan migrants into custody at their homes and workplaces and first bused migrants to a facility in Zeralda, a suburb of the capital.

On December 2, the authorities reportedly forced some of the migrants into a first convoy of buses heading toward Tamanrasset, 1,900 kilometers south.

Human Rights Watch said it reached two men by phone who were in a second convoy of buses heading south from Zeralda. They separately provided similar accounts of police rounding them up and placing them on the buses.

They said the authorities did not screen them to ascertain their situation or refugee status, provide information about their rights, or allow them to contact the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees or consular representatives of their country of origin.

According to the agency, the men said on December 1, the mayor of the Dely Ibrahim commune and several other officials came to their building, where more than 150 migrants live, and asked them to collect their belongings and enter nearby vans belonging to the gendarmerie.

The mayor was said to have told them they were being relocated to a safer building to protect them, following clashes that they had had with Algerian residents.

Thierry, from Cameroon, said the vans transported them to Zeralda, where he discovered hundreds of others, all of whom appeared to be sub-Saharan Africans. Some were sleeping on the ground, as there were no mattresses.

He said that gendarmes took their belongings when they arrived. When Thierry asked the commander to return them, the commander replied, “This stuff belongs to Algeria. You did not come from your countries with all of these things, and so they have to remain in Algeria.”

Thierry said on December 2, the gendarmes assembled the migrants in the camp and ordered them to board buses to be expelled to their home countries. When migrants protested, the gendarmes clubbed them to force them onto the buses, and used teargas, injuring many people, including women and children.

He said he remained behind with hundreds of others as the first convoy of buses left.

“On December 4, at 5am, gendarmes ordered the remaining migrants into a second convoy of buses,” Human Rights Watch said in its report.

Thierry said he counted 24 buses, each with about 70 seats. He said that he assumed his bus was heading to Tamanrasset because he had called a passenger in the December 2 convoy who had already arrived there. Thierry said the passengers on the second convoy had no water for almost a day.

Ismael, from Cameroon, said he had been living with his wife in Algiers for a year and a half. He said he has documents recognising his refugee status from the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) office in Algiers.

He said the gendarmes had not checked the Africans’ documents to verify who had legal residence or was registered as a refugee or as an asylum seeker.

According to him, when he showed the gendarme commander in Zeralda documents proving his refugee status, the commander replied, “This is not my problem, I can’t do anything for you.”

Human Rights Watch spoke by phone on December 7 to Adele, a woman from Cameroon who said her bus, which left Zeralda three days earlier, had reached Tamanrasset at 3:30 that morning.

Adele said that she had lived in Algiers for five years. She said as they were approaching the Tamanrasset camp, she saw several buses departing. She reached several people on the buses by phone who said they were heading to Ain Guezzam, a town on the border with Niger. She lost contact with them at around 6am.

The Algerian government has said nothing officially about the operation; the embassy in Washington, DC, did not respond to a request for comment, according to Human Rights Watch.