Algerian diplomats said in leaks to local press on Tuesday that Algeria is being targeted by a major campaign of defamation” on the issue of deporting illegal immigrants.
The North African country is considered one of the countries most affected by the phenomenon of international networks of human trafficking, arms and drugs, according to the authorities.
Algeria and Tunisia, which suffer from undefined migration challenges, reject proposals made by European capitals on monitoring illegal migrants and pushing back against them touching on EU territory.
Both countries have come to face mass refugee influx triggered by the Libyan crisis since the fall of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's regime.
Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia has recently said that his country is opposed to the idea of establishing camps to screen requests for asylum for African migrants.
“European governments want to make Algeria and its neighbors (Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt) camps to prevent the influx of Africans into its territory,” he said.
In 2011, Algeria received a formal request from France concerning measures to stop the advance of African migrants into European countries.
“We do not want to play the role of police in the Mediterranean,” Algerian former interior minister Dahou Ould Kablia said in an interview.
Diplomats pointed out that the rise of the far right to power in some European countries has put pressure on North African countries on their role in stopping the waves of migrants.
More so, other political figures defended the “humane face of Algeria’s dealing with unregistered immigrants, especially when it comes to Africans who have always presented a strategic depth for Algeria.”
On the other hand, the Algerian Red Crescent Society last week condemned what it called an “organized campaign launched by international parties against,” defending Algeria against the United Nations Human Rights Council's harsh criticism of Algerian authorities under-monitoring the transfer of thousands of migrants “in inhumane conditions” from the northern cities to the country’s southern border.
A government source told Asharq Al-Awsat that authorities were deeply disturbed by the contents of an Associated Press report on displaced Nigerian migrants interviewed by the US-based news agency in an isolated town deep in desert sand on the Niger border with Algeria.
