(BSS/AFP) - Amnesty International on Thursday accused Tunisia of committing "widespread human rights violations" against migrants, including rape and torture, and condemned the EU`s "cynical" cooperation with Tunis to curb irregular migration.

Tunisia is a major departure point for tens of thousands of migrants, many from sub-Saharan Africa, attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea each year in the hopes of a better life in Europe.

In a new report based on research between February 2023 and June 2025, Amnesty said it had interviewed some 120 refugees and migrants, mostly from Guinea, Sudan and Sierra Leone.

"Tunisia`s migration and asylum system is now characterised by racist policing and widespread human rights violations," the rights group said.

It said that system "generally disregards the lives, safety and dignity of refugees and migrants, particularly those who are Black".

Amnesty said it had gathered "chilling testimonies of dehumanising sexual violence, severe beatings and other torture and cruel treatment" against migrants, allegedly committed by Tunisia`s National Guard.

On Wednesday, Tunisian Foreign Minister Mohamed Ali Nafti, quoted by several media outlets, said all migrants who entered Tunisian territory illegally would be repatriated "with human dignity".

- President`s speech singled out -

The North African country`s policy on irregular migration shifted in 2023, Amnesty added, "with disturbing public advocacy of racial hatred and xenophobia shared by the highest officials".

In February that year, President Kais Saied said "hordes of illegal migrants" posed a demographic threat to the Arab-majority country.

Saied`s "speech triggered an upsurge in anti-Black violence, with groups of individuals attacking Black refugees and migrants in the streets", the Amnesty report said.

The rights watchdog also said it "found that the Tunisian coastguard repeatedly resorted to reckless, unlawful and violent actions that put peoples` lives at risk and indeed caused deaths".

A Cameroonian woman cited in the report said coastguard officers "kept hitting our boat with long batons with sharp endings (until) they pierced it".

She said "there were at least two women and three babies without life vests (and) we saw them drown".

Fourteen refugees and migrants told Amnesty they had been "raped, or had witnessed rapes, or had experienced other forms of sexual assault or harassment, by Tunisian security authorities".

The rights group also criticised the European Union for a 2023 agreement with Tunisia to tackle irregular migration, saying it had come "during a peak of racist violence" and "without effective human rights safeguards".

Amnesty denounced the bloc`s efforts to curb arrivals as "a cynical attempt to entrap refugees and migrants where their lives and rights are at risk".