“I
gave my birth to my baby in a toilet – I lost her and now I’m
dying as well,” says a woman weeping as she lies on a dirty floor,
unable to walk after months without medical treatment. She is one of
thousands of women and children held indefinitely in Libya’s
countless detention centres, caught in a lucrative trade between
militias and people smugglers profiting from the worst refugee crisis
the world has ever seen.
Near
Tripoli, the Fallah detention centre holds almost 900 men. When the
Libyan guards’ backs are turned, they tell film-makers how they
were “beaten like animals” and called “slaves” by their
captors. Those centres are controlled by the UN-backed Libyan
government, but many more are under the control of the numerous
militias and armed groups operating in the country that have forced
migrants from across Africa into work camps and brothels. Britain and
other European
countries are increasing cooperation with
Libya to slow the crossings but the war-torn country’s fledgling
Government of National Accord (GNA) have been powerless to stop
warring militias profiting from exploiting desperate refugees. The
documentary’s director, Marta Shaw, said it would be tantamount to
“signing a death sentence” to force refugees attempting to cross
the Mediterranean back to Libya. “Outsourcing
the policing of our borders to Libya isn’t the solution,” she
added.
The UK
is helping train the Libyan coastguard,
which is being given increasing responsibility for “rescue”
missions, but new footage to be broadcast by Sky shows its staff
beating and whipping refugees in a boat. Ross
Kemp, the
former EastEnders actor
said the coastguard showed
little concern as they attacked refugees from sub-Saharan Africa,
having already been accused of causing
at least 25 people to drown in
the panic caused by a similar attack. “They
seemed to take a bit too much pleasure in the beating,” he told The
Independent. “They
left them for hours in the sun without water and food, then they took
them to detention centres, splitting up families. If you’re going
to do that you also have a responsibility to ensure they’re treated
as human beings, and they’re not. Turning them back isn’t going
to stop them coming, it’s inhuman.”
Refugees
forced back to land by Libyan authorities are taken to detention
centres spread along the country’s coast – some controlled by the
government and others by powerful militias that have carved the
country up since the UK-backed ousting of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
They
are held for months, before being moved or sold on to smugglers to
attempt the treacherous crossing once more. Some are said to be taken
to Libya’s southern border, although rumours of people being
abandoned and left to die in the desert abound.
Kemp
said he feared Europe was adopting an “out of sight, out of mind
approach” to the refugee crisis as it enters its third year. “These
people are being treated like commodities,” he added. “Their own
countries don’t want them, Libya certainly doesn’t want them and
Europe doesn’t want them – so what happens to them?”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/ross-kemp-libya-migrant-hell-video-documentary-sky-refugees-torture-rape-detention-mediterranean-a7587811.html
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