The Vatican newspaper decried Tunisian President Kais Saied’s decision to expel hundreds of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa (map).
In “Il deserto dell’umanità” (“The Desert of Humanity”)—the most prominent front-page article in its May 7 edition—L’Osservatore Romano editorialized, “Abandoned in the desert, without water or food: this is the dramatic fate of hundreds of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa whom the Tunis authorities have forcibly deported to Jendouba, on the border with Algeria. Their ‘fault’? Being irregular migrants. As if irregularity were synonymous with the nullity of the person.”
“Of their dignity, of their dreams in Tunis, only rubble remains, or rather, waste,” the unsigned article concluded. “Like those that garbage collectors removed from makeshift camps. A blow of the broom to the garbage, a blow of the broom to humanity.”