Tunisia Releases Foreign Student Leader Pending Deportation

Tunis, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 6th Apr, 2024) The former president of a sub-Saharan African students' association who was arrested in Tunis last month has been released, the student group said Friday.

Christian Kwongang, a Cameroonian who led the Association of African Students and Interns in Tunisia (AESAT) until last February, was "found and doing well physically", the group said in a statement.

Kwongang, who is himself a student in Tunisia, had previously spoken out about a wave of racist attacks and arbitrary arrests in the north African country last year.

He was arrested on March 19 "without official charges or trial" while on his way to renew his residency, according to the group.

The association's current president, Yaya Traore, told AFP Kwongang was released on March 29, but the association waited to see if he was subject to further "police surveillance" before announcing his release.

The day before he was set free, Kwongang was transferred from a detention centre in Ouardia, in the southern suburbs of the capital Tunis, to a hotel where he was still under "police surveillance", Traore said.

The interior ministry said Kwongang had been "housed in a specialised centre in anticipation of his deportation" after authorities accused him of "acts in violation of Tunisian laws and harming public order".

A ministry statement said he was being supported by the Tunisian Red Crescent while awaiting expulsion to Cameroon.

The students' association said Kwongang had been questioned at length about his activities after a controversial speech by President Kais Saied last year, in which he denounced "hordes of illegal migrants" as a demographic threat to the country.

His speech was followed by a surge of anti-migrant violence across Tunisia, a major transit point for African migrants hoping to reach Europe. Hundreds of sub-Saharan Africans were kicked out of their jobs and homes.

While still president of the association in March 2023, Kwongang spoke to AFP in an interview and detailed how students had been caught up in the wave of racist violence.

Witnesses described a "hunt for blacks" and for more than a fortnight the association advised students to stop attending classes and to 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.