Rabat – Among the uproar caused following the deportation of over 1,400 Sub-Saharan immigrants in recent weeks, the Algerian government has claimed that the operations were conducted in “respect of human rights,” according to a statement of the Algerian Foreign Ministry.
The release on Saturday said the deportations were for the “better” as the immigrants had allegedly been “committing assaults in various regions of the country.”
“The authorities have noticed in Algiers, acts of vandalism and physical assaults unacceptable and inexcusable against volunteers from the Red Crescent of Algeria,” the statement read.
To alleviate the suffering of the Sub-Saharan migrants expelled from Algeria to Niger, Moroccan authorities moved quickly to provide them with humanitarian aid.
On Thursday King Mohammed VI ordered the government to send 116 tons of humanitarian aid to Sub-Saharan migrants located in northern Niger.
A majority of the migrants, many of whom were women and children, had been transported from different regions of Algeria to the border town of Tamanrasset, in the south, before they were taken across the border to Niger.
According to RFI, the people being held in the Tamanrasset camp are fed very poorly: One meal a day — “rice with two bottles of milk for 25 people. No milk.”
“The police won’t let us outside. If we go out, they beat us. They’re treating us like dogs,” one migrant told RFI.
The Algerian authorities have not put their best foot forward in justifying the mass deportations over the past week.
On December 5th, Farouk Ksentini, the president of Algeria’s human rights commission told “Essawt El Akher” that “the presence of migrants and refugees in various parts of the country…could risk the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.”
