The Meloni government’s support for Israel and its more stringent migration policies risk fueling a hitherto unprecedented anti-Italian sentiment in Tunisia. A disaffection that last weekend, at International book fair in Tunis, has found the last opportunity to manifest itself. “Fascist Italy! Zionist Italy!” shouted a group of pro-Palestinian young people – the movement is called Common Action for Palestine – in front of the Italian stand. The protesters turned against the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano, visiting the event in the company of the ambassador, Alessandro Prunas. Palestinian chants and flags waved a few meters from the Italian delegation, invited as guests of honor to the country’s main cultural event but forced to abandon the event protected by security men. Although “Tunisia and Italy share a common history and a closeness that is not only geographical but extends to all areas of art and culture”, as Prunas recalled on the sidelines of the event, something is cracking, especially in the most leaders of Tunisian society.
The Book Fair episode adds to others that in the last year make up a new scenario. Two weeks ago, during the prime minister’s visit to Tunis, a group of demonstrators showed up under the Italian embassy to protest against the agreements concluded by the government with the dictator of Carthage, Kais Saied. “There are no illegal migrations, it is your policy that is illegal,” read some signs held up by human rights activists. Others displayed photos of Tunisian nationals missing at sea. Similar protests against Italy took place last summer, at the beginning of the negotiations between Meloni, the EU and Tunis for the agreement on migrants and also three years ago, following the affair of the illegal disposal of waste from ‘Italy to Tunisia.
Now the issue of the war in Gaza – very sensitive in a country where Saied himself has never hidden his contemptuous anti-Semitism – tends to merge with that of migrants. Meloni’s trips to Tunis, four in the last ten months, have taken on the characteristics of a diplomatic ritual that has involved practically every government department. After his visit in mid-April, accompanied by the Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi and the Minister of the Anna Maria Bernini University, it was the turn of the trip to Tunis by the Minister of Defense Guido Crosetto, then by the Minister of Education Giuseppe Valditara and then by the Minister of Culture Sangiuliano and finally, on Monday, by the Foreign and Defense Commission of the Senate led by President Stefania Craxi. An interest viewed with suspicion by the elites and what remains of the opposition, worried about the legitimacy offered by Rome to Saied in view of the elections, which should be held in the autumn but which risk being very undemocratic.
Majdi Karbai, a Tunisian politician forced into exile, recalls that in all these diplomatic meetings “there was never talk of civil liberties and human rights” and speaks to Il Foglio about this new distrust of Tunisians towards Italy: “A problem which did not exist before, triggered by this government’s foreign policy. There are hundreds of young people who have been refused visas to go to study in Italy. And then there are thousands of Tunisians who died at sea. Recently, the case of torture at the Beccaria prison in Milan against Tunisian minors was added, which sparked indignation.”
“In Africa, charity should not be given but serious and strategic, non-predatory cooperative relationships must be created,” said Meloni. And so the Italian government aims to guarantee around 12 thousand residence permits to qualified workers in the next three years, spending a very modest amount in itself – around 100 million euros – but within the framework of an instrument, the Mattei Plan, on which Meloni has invested a lot in the media. Italy wants to claim a different posture from that of France, tainted by colonial legacies despised throughout Africa. However, comments Karbai, “neither Berlin nor Paris have ever dreamed of taking sides so openly in support of a dictator like Saied, an enemy of civil liberties and human rights, as Italy does”.
