by Nurat Uthman
The former president of an association for students from sub-Saharan Africa in Tunisia has been arrested without apparent reason, NGOs in the North African country said on Tuesday.
Christian Kwongang, a Cameroonian student in Tunis who, until last month, led the Association of African Students and Interns in Tunisia, was on his way to renew his residency last week when he was arrested “without official charges or trial,” said the student group.
“Last we heard, Christian Kwongang is detained at a center in Ouardia (south of Tunis) without any official reason,” said Yaya Traore, the student group’s new president, in a phone interview with AFP.
Kwongang had previously spoken out about a wave of racist attacks and arbitrary arrests in Tunisia last year.
Tunisia experienced a surge of anti-migrant violence following a speech by Tunisian President Kais Saied in February 2023 in which he denounced “hordes of illegal migrants” as a demographic threat to the country.
The Mediterranean country is a major transit point for African migrants hoping to reach Europe, as well as being home to thousands of students from sub-Saharan Africa.
Traore said Kwongang managed to phone an association member after his arrest and said he had been questioned at length about his activities following Saied’s speech in 2023.
The Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights called for Kwongang’s “urgent release,” saying he was arrested “outside of any legal framework.”
The Tunisian interior ministry said it had no information yet on his arrest.
Traore said several lawyers had been appointed by the United Nations’ International Organisation for Migration and the NGOs Lawyers Without Borders and Terre d’Asile to work on Kwongang’s release.
Following Saied’s speech last year, anti-migrant violence broke out and hundreds of people from sub-Saharan Africa were kicked out of their jobs and homes in Tunisia.
Many, mostly from Guinea, Ivory Coast and Mali, sought refuge at their embassies before being repatriated.
Kwongang spoke to AFP in an interview in March 2023, while still president of the association, and detailed how students had been caught up in the wave of racist violence and arbitrary arrests.
Witnesses described a “hunt for blacks” and for more than a fortnight the association advised students to stop attending classes and venture outside only in an emergency.
In 2021, there were more than 8,000 students from sub-Saharan Africa in Tunisia, a figure five times what it had been 10 years before, and which authorities had said they wanted to increase even more.
