The UN Human Rights Office has called on the government of Algeria to stop the collective expulsion of thousands of migrants, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, condemning the practice as a violation of international human rights law.
Between March and April this year, the UN Human Rights Office reported that Algerian authorities carried out at least six mass round-ups of sub-Saharan African migrants in Oran, Duira and Boufarik.
The agency’s spokesperson, Ravina Shamdasani, said the raids were carried out on construction sites, in neighborhoods where migrants live, and some were picked up in the streets and detained. She said the problem with the collective expulsions is that no distinctions or individual assessments of the migrants were made.
In Shamdasani’s words, “We are told that people are often just arrested and detained without even checking their documents. Of the 25 people that my colleagues spoke to in Niger Republic, only one said that she actually had her passport checked and most of them were asked to provide thumb prints on documents in Arabic when they do not read Arabic.”
Many of the migrants said they were not allowed to pick up their belongings before they were expelled and transferred rapidly to Niger Republic. Others were detained in reportedly inhuman and degrading conditions in military bases.
The UN agency has been inundated with testimonies which showed that the migrants remaining in Algeria are uncertain about their fate as the authorities could always pick them up at any time.
