Tunisia - (AFP) - A Tunisian non-governmental organization specializing in migration issues denounced on Sunday the government's "inhumane and oppressive" decision to deport a group of irregular migrants who arrived in Tunisia in 2011.

Naglaa Boden's government declared during a ministerial council on Friday, "the need to start deporting them (immigrants) due to their illegal status, provided that the procedures begin as soon as possible," according to a statement by the government presidency.

The Presidency of the Government added that the stay of this group of immigrants in a state-run youth center in the city of La Marsa, on the outskirts of Tunis, for more than five years, "has disrupted the work of the complex (the center)" because of "their total refusal to leave the place."

In response, the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights expressed in a statement Sunday its "indignation at the inhumane and oppressive decision of the prime minister."

According to this NGO, 25 male migrants, including Egyptians, Sudanese, Nigeriens and Nigerians, between the ages of 30 and 32, who fled the tensions in Libya in 2011, have been staying in the youth complex since 2017 after being evacuated from the Choucha refugee camp in southern Tunisia.

The official in the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, Ramadan Benomar, told AFP that the authorities had rejected their asylum requests, stressing that "the return of these migrants to their country threatens their lives."

The forum warned against "any attempt to impose a solution by force on a vulnerable group whose suffering has continued for more than ten years."

The organization called on civil society to mobilize "against the discriminatory and repressive policies of the Tunisian government towards migrants," stressing that it had resorted to "international organizations, the European Union and all countries that were parties to the Libyan crisis in an attempt to find a solution, even if exceptional, for the remaining group, but to no avail."

Following the outbreak of the revolution in Libya in 2011, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) opened the Shusha camp, which hosted up to 18,000 people at the height of the crisis.

In 2013, the UNHCR decided to close the camp, leaving hundreds of its residents awaiting resettlement in third countries.

While some were able to leave Tunisia, others were offered to move to Tunisian cities.

However, dozens of migrants remained in the camp, demanding a positive response to their asylum application, before they were evacuated from the site in 2017.