* Judith Sunderland * Pix Source :www.hrw.org
…As Migrants, Asylum Seekers Faces Killings, Rape, Torture
Human Rights Watch has said that European Union efforts to stem migration from Libya further expose migrants and asylum seekers to violent abuse in the hands of government officials, militias and criminal groups in Libya.
The body listed the newly documented abuses to include torture, rape and killings in squalid detention centres where migrants, including people intercepted at sea by the Libyan Coast Guards, are detained.
On June 20, 2016, the EU extended its anti-smuggling naval operation in the central Mediterranean to include training the Libyan Coast Guards and Navy, which are intercepting boats and sending migrants and asylum seekers back to Libya.
HRW informed that EU has also asked the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to assist its operation and that NATO members will be discussing options at its summit in Warsaw on July 8 and 9.
Speaking on the issue, Associate Europe and Central Asia Director at Human Rights Watch, Judith Sunderland said, “The EU isn’t sending people back to Libya, knowing that’s unlawful, so it wants to outsource the dirty work to Libyan forces. The EU soon perhaps with NATO’s help is basically deputising Libyan forces to help seal Europe’s border.”
HRW noted that at present, EU and NATO vessels are not allowed to operate in Libyan territorial waters but that the EU has acknowledged that, under international law, it may not send people rescued in international waters back to Libya due to extreme dangers in that country.
In June, Human Rights Watch interviewed 47 people in Sicily, 23 women and 24 men, who had recently travelled from Libya to Italy on smugglers’ boats.
Those interviewed according to HRW are from Cameroon, Eritrea, Gambia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan, adding that they said that they had left their homes to flee persecution, including abusive military service, to escape forced marriage, or to seek education and work. They described severe abuses in Libya by government officials, smugglers and members of militias and criminal gangs and at times collaboration between officials and smugglers, rampant lawlessness and violence across Libya convinced those who had gone there for work to attempt the perilous sea crossing to Europe.
A 31-year-old Gambian man, who told Human Rights Watch that criminals had raped his wife, said, “In Libya, they do whatever they like because there’s no law, no nothing.”
According to HRW eight of those interviewed said Libyan forces they believed to be from the Coast Guards or Navy had intercepted their boat in various incidents and taken them and other passengers back to land, sometimes beating them and that on shore, they were held in immigration detention centres with others apprehended on land for entering Libya irregularly or not having permission to stay.
Most of the centres are run by the Department for Combating Illegal Migration (DCIM), under the Interior Ministry, which is nominally controlled by the UN-backed and EU-recognised Government of National Accord, one of three competing authorities in Libya.
According to an international task force that visited the facilities, DCIM runs approximately 20 centres, most in western Libya, holding roughly 3,500 people, adding that militias and smugglers run many other non-official detention facilities.
According to former detainees conditions at DCIM centres in Tripoli, Zawiya, and Subratha were abysmal and that there are extreme overcrowding, filthy rooms, and insufficient food.
Abuses inherent therein included killing, beatings, forced labor, and sexual violence against men and women.
A 40-year-old Cameroonian “Guyzo, said he was detained in the Southern City of Sebha in December 2014 for not having proper residence papers and spent a year in detention, in three different centres the last six months in Tripoli.
According to him, “It was inhumane there. I have many scars…. Six men hanged themselves in my room. [They were] men who had been sodomized, who couldn’t take it anymore. It [rape] happened to me seven times. Four or five men at once, beating me to hold me down. If you resist, they call others to beat you more.”
According to HRW In addition to physical abuse, all of the former detainees said no one took them before a judge or allowed them to challenge their detention.
HRW argued that prolonged detention without judicial review amounts to arbitrary detention and is prohibited under international law.
HRW stated that four people described abuses and dangerous maneuvers at sea by the Coast Guards and that in one case, the forces sped around a migrants’ rubber dinghy, causing panic and in the process a Nigerian woman was crushed to death.
Given the chaos and violence in Libya, in October 2015 UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, called on all countries to “allow civilians (Libyan nationals, habitual residents of Libya and third country nationals) fleeing Libya access to their territories.”
According to HRW EU policies that result in preventing migrants and asylum seekers from leaving Libya, or that return them to Libya to face serious abuses, contradict the spirit of UNHCR’s call and violate international law. Article 12(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the body pointed out grants people the right to leave any country, including their own.
The EU, the body said should ensure that none of its training, financing or material assistance to the Libyan Coast Guards and other Libyan authorities worsens human rights abuses and that the EU should support monitoring and public reporting by international observers, including the UN and EU agencies, about detention facilities in Libya, including centers where those rescued or intercepted by the Libyan Coast Guards are detained.
HRW also said that the EU should also put pressure on Libyan authorities to end abuse in detention, offer alternatives to immigration detention and ratify the 1951 Refugee Convention.
HRW urged the UN to assist Libyans and non-Libyans alike, the EU and its member states should generously fund the humanitarian response in Libya, adding that as at April 2016, the UN’s humanitarian appeal had received only 18.2 per cent of the required $165.6 million.
Human Rights Watch argued that any NATO support for EU naval operations should avoid contributing to trapping migrants and asylum seekers in Libya and that all NATO vessels in the central Mediterranean should have the mandate and capacity to conduct search and rescue.
It urged the UN-backed government in Libya to work to end torture and other ill-treatment in all detention facilities under its control and that it should detain people for immigration purposes only when strictly necessary and for the shortest possible time.
According to Sunderland, “Supporting Libyan forces should be accompanied by ending torture and abuse in the facilities where those forces are sending people. It’s unacceptable to save or intercept people at sea and then send them back for abuse on land.”
