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| ONE WORLD, ONE HUMANITY |
The majority of Africans who emigrate remain within Africa
but amid rising concerns over the spread of Islamist militant groups on the
continent and several economies hit by a slump in commodities prices, some
African nations are clamping down on those migration flows.
"The situation is changing. Some African countries are
becoming less flexible in accepting migrants," said Michele Bombassei, the
International Migration Organization's (IOM) Migrant Assistance Specialist for
West Africa.
Gabon, whose oil reserves have given its 1.5 million people
amongst the highest per-capita income in Africa, has long been a magnet for
migrants from countries like Senegal, an arid West African state with a
tradition of emigration dating back decades.
Papa Demba Sow left Senegal two years ago hoping to make a
better life in the oil-rich central African country of Gabon but in July he was
arrested by police, thrown in jail for a month and deported along with hundreds
of other Africans. Sow, a 33-year-old welder, went to Gabon to join family
members already living there but said it had become extremely hard to obtain
residency. Police officers harassed African immigrants on the streets of the
coastal capital Libreville until they were paid off, he said. In detention,
more than 300 migrants were packed into a few rooms, with many forced to sleep
on the floor. Breakfast was a slice of bread, with a plate of rice and fish for
dinner. “They treated us really bad, like dogs or sheep,” said Sow.
Amnesty International has documented thousands of
deportations by Republic of Congo. The foreigners, many of them from
neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, were often simply put on pirogues
and shipped across the Congo River to Kinshasa. An Amnesty report in May said the security
operation, dubbed “Mbata ya Bakolo” or “slap of the elders” in Lingala, was
ostensibly meant to target criminals but became an excuse for mass expulsions.
Amnesty said police destroyed property, extorted money and raped women and
girls. A second phase of the operation was launched in May, targeting West
Africans in Pointe-Noire, Congo’s oil hub and second-largest city. Police said
that month they had arrested 1,150 people, primarily from West Africa and
Democratic Republic of Congo. Alain Roy, Amnesty's deputy regional campaigns
director, said such deportations had shattered lives and exacerbated poverty,
exposing the limits of pan-Africanism.
"We're certainly concerned to see the same kind of
attitudes (in Africa) that we have seen around the world and in Europe -- where
whole societies see migrants or refugees as 'others', as people who are not
deserving humane treatment," he said. "You have Africans treating Africans
poorly. We have seen... xenophobia, racism, discrimination."
Nearby oil-rich Equatorial Guinea deported hundreds of
people in the wake of the African Nations Cup football tournament this year.
Even in South Africa, the continent's most developed
economy, many economic migrants fled an outbreak of xenophobic attacks this
year by residents afraid foreigners are taking their jobs. At least seven
people were killed.
North African oil producer Algeria has deported more than
3,700 migrants to Niger this year, mostly women and children who came to beg on
the streets, as part of a bilateral agreement between Algiers and Niamey
intended to curb illegal immigration.
Cameroon, Niger and Chad have also deported thousands of
people in the face of terrorist attacks within their borders by Nigerian
Islamist group Boko Haram. Sory Kaba, who heads the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’
department for Senegalese abroad, said the rise of militant groups such as Boko
Haram had fed xenophobia and deportations.
“They are scared for their own nations,” said Kaba. “That’s
why they make it more difficult to enter and they make it more difficult to
stay.”
Mamadou Ka, a shopkeeper in Gabon who had been deported to
Senegal, explained. “We are all Africans...It is necessary to have a policy of
integration, of free circulation.”
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