“Unimaginable horrors,” “extrajudicial killings,” “sexual abuse,” “torture,” “slavery,” and “arbitrary detention,” are the key terms mentions in the latest report about Libya by the United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHR). And the leaders in the EU are supporting those who responsible for it, as we know it.
The report calls on European Union states to “re-examine their cooperation with the Libyan authorities on the issue of migration to avoid contributing to such rampant abuse.”
“This should include working towards an end to the mandatory, automatic and arbitrary detention of migrants and refugees in irregular situations, stamping out of torture and ill-treatment, sexual violence and forced labour in detention, and ending all return practices that would violate the strict prohibitions on collective expulsion and refoulement,” the report says.
One of the countries which supported this system in Libya is the UK. And one teenager from Ethiopia, an asylum seeker in the UK, is planning to sue the government for its role in funding detention centres in Libya where he experienced physical abuse, extortion, and forced labour.
It is the first time ever somebody will try to initiate legal action against the government’s Department for International Development (DfID).
The teenager claims that “officials are acting unlawfully in funding the detention centres and should stop doing so.” He is also asking for compensation for the suffering he endured there.
“The period I was detained and enslaved in Libya was a living hell,” he said. Doctors found 31 different lesions on this body after he came to the UK.
During their visits to Libyan detention centers, the UN team could see what media and activists, as well as survivors, have been reporting for months now: severe overcrowding, lack of proper ventilation and lighting, inadequate access to washing facilities and latrines, constant confinement, denial of contact with the outside world, and malnutrition.
“This climate of lawlessness provides fertile ground for thriving illicit activities, such as trafficking in human beings and criminal smuggling, and leaves migrant and refugee men, women and children at the mercy of countless predators who view them as commodities to be exploited and extorted for maximum financial gain,” the UN report states.
In the mean time, rulers in Libya announced even more controversial projects. Again, measures will be implemented with the help of the EU member states, in this case Spain, under the pretext of “combating illegal migration.”
The Deputy Minister of Interior for Illegal Immigration Affairs, Mohammed al-Shibani, announced the formation of the Desert Patrols Department, but he did not elaborate on how the desert patrols will function, and whether they already started working.