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AFP

22 February 2017

Italy rescued hundreds of people off the Libyan coast last night

File photo of migrants and refugees in rubber boats off the coast of Libya: Andreas Solaro/AFP

AFP

Italy's coast guard has rescued about 630 migrants off the coast of Libya who were trying to cross the Mediterranean.

The two rescue operations came as the bodies of 74 migrants who drowned trying to reach Europe washed up on a beach west of the Libyan capital, the Red Crescent said on Tuesday.

The Italian coast guard said it mounted operations to rescue two drifting vessels, a large boat and a rubber raft.

In the absence of an army or a regular police force in Libya, several militias act as coast guards but are often accused themselves of complicity or even involvement in the people-smuggling business.

The number of attempted crossings has surged this year, with most departures taking place from the west of Libya, from where Italy is just 300 kilometres (190 miles) away.

Europeans are considering measures aimed at blocking the arrival of thousands of migrants, alarming NGOs which fear that those stranded in Libya may suffer mistreatment.

Source=http://www.thelocal.it/20170222/italy-rescued-hundreds-of-people-off-the-libyan-coast-last-night

February 20, 2017

By Ross Kemp

I’ve seen the dangerous route to Europe through Libya, with thousands of people at the mercy of cruelty for profit. But our leaders prefer to keep them there

Ross Kemp with migrants back in port
‘We have a heightened responsibility towards Libya because of the role Britain played in bringing down the Gaddafi dictatorship.’ Photograph: Dave Williams/Sound Ltd

It’s a mass grave that we don’t need the United Nations to verify. Every day an average of 14 migrants, the vast majority from countries in sub-Saharan Africa, die crossing the Mediterranean.

Many more see their European dream turn into a nightmare long before they’re corralled on to flimsy rubber dinghies on Libya’s beaches. They’re the victims of a silent massacre in the Sahara desert – a journey more deadly than the crossing from the coast, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

Come the spring, thousands of migrants and refugees fleeing poverty and violence will die in Libya, but I doubt you’ll hear much about it. Compassion fatigue has set in. The numbers have become too big to comprehend. It’s an old story; we feel numbed by the now familiar news images of men huddled together on boats. Maybe it’s because they’re African and have been written off as “undeserving economic migrants”. These are the people some of our political leaders have in mind when they talk of swarms, plagues and marauders. The understandable focus on Syrian refugees has taken the spotlight away from the more dangerous route to Europe through Libya.

Ross Kemp with migrants waiting to be picked up
‘What I saw there is nothing short of a modern-day slave trade.’ Photograph: Dave Williams/Sound Ltd

Or maybe it’s because, with three rival governments presiding over anarchy in Libya, and the real power lying in the hands of armed militias, getting inside the country to tell the story is just too difficult and dangerous. One thing is becoming clear – many people have come to see this tragic situation as though it were more a problem for us than for the migrants. We have stopped caring about them. As a documentary-maker, I believe it’s our job to make people care. That was the reason my team and I went to Libya – to try to shine a light on the under-reported plight of migrants away from the coastline and to tell the human stories of the men and women making the journey.

What I saw there is nothing short of a modern-day slave trade, with migrants treated as commodities. It’s as though nothing has changed in the 300 years since desert tribes used the very same routes to bring slaves to north Africa: Nigerian women told they are going to Italy to work as housemaids only to be trafficked into desert brothels with no idea when they might leave, young men cruelly beaten and held captive for months until their families pay a ransom, women forced to take contraception to stop themselves becoming pregnant at the hands of smugglers.

What makes their plight even sadder is that most have no idea what sort of country they’re entering. I saw this when I spoke with men and women at the very start of their journey – dazed and battered from the drive across the desert border with Niger but filled with a naive optimism.

Not only are they at the mercy of people smugglers but also the authorities themselves – in the main, armed militias with no one to hold them to account and few other sources of income apart from the migrant trade. In the desert town of Brak, I met a young man who told me he had no choice but to work for a smuggling ring ferrying migrants to a handover point on the back of a pickup.

While Libyans may rely on their own militias for protection, the migrants have nothing and no one to protect them. When they are intercepted by what authorities do exist in the country, they are taken to squalid, overcrowded warehouses – generously referred to as detention centres. In one centre for women in the coastal town of Surman I met Aisha, a young Nigerian. She was bleeding to death after giving birth to her baby girl on the toilet floor. The child died three days later. Since coming home we have tried but been unable to find out what has happened to Aisha. I fear the worst.

Even in the worst refugee camps in the world there is often food, medical facilities and aid workers to offer support. In the Libyan detention centres, migrants are locked up and left to rot. It’s a humanitarian disaster with barely any humanitarian organisations there to help. For tens of thousands of migrants in the country at the moment, they have no means of escape. Libya doesn’t want them, Europe doesn’t want them and even their own countries don’t want them.

We have a heightened responsibility towards Libya because of the role Britain played in bringing down Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorship with no strategy for what was to come next. In the five and a half years since his death, lawlessness and anarchy have created the perfect conditions for people smuggling to thrive.

Last month, EU leaders under pressure to stop the tide of migrants travelling to Europe signed a deal with Libya. Far from helping people escape, this deal is aimed at keeping them there. It’s only one step away from forcibly returning them. Whatever your view on the migrants’ rights, forcing them back into the conditions we know they will experience in Libya is far from a humane solution. Conditions for migrants in the country need to drastically improve and until there is evidence of this, can we really consider the current deal an acceptable solution to such a horrific situation?

This article was co-authored by producer Jamie Welham. Ross Kemp: Libya’s Migrant Hell airs on Sky 1 on 21 February at 9pm

Source: The Guardian

Source=http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/20/migrant-slave-trade-libya-europe

Over 1,000 refugees, primarily from Eritrea, traveled to Jerusalem on Thursday from the Holot detention facility in the Negev to plead to the High Court of Justice for political asylum amid threats of deportation.

Wearing laminated Israeli Prison Services identification cards around their necks like scarlet letters, the men gathered in the Rose Garden, across from the Knesset, to protest a pending appeal that could result in their deportations to Sudan, Eritrea, Rwanda, or Uganda.

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According to the protest’s organizers, March for Freedom, asylum seekers who have been deported to third-party counties, such as Rwanda, have been systematically sent to Uganda, where they have no legal status, and are at risk of being repatriated back to Eritrea.

“The persecution they face forces our sisters and brothers to continue their search for refuge… where they are trafficked by gangs of smugglers, fall into the hands of ISIS, murderous gangs, and die in the deserts of Sahara and Libya, or at sea,” March for Freedom said in a statement.

“You, the justices of the High Court, are the only ones who have the authority to save Israel from committing the injustice of deporting vulnerable asylum seekers in violation of all international agreements. Our fate is completely in your hands, and we beseech you to carefully consider all of the implications of your decisions, and to make them with the utmost care.”

Tekle Negash, a 21-year-old Eritrean refugee who came alone to Israel in 2012, said he has been incarcerated in Holot for the past three months, where he described the conditions as “horrid.”

Negash, who formerly lived in Tel Aviv, Petah Tikva and Hadera, and supported himself by working menial jobs, said he was sent to Holot after not being able to procure another temporary visa, which refugees must renew every two months.

“When my visa expired, [the government] told me that I had to go to Holot, and that after one year there, if I can’t get another visa, I will be deported,” he said, noting that he is confined to a small cell from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. with 10 other Eritreans.

“It’s very crowded, and there is only one shower and one toilet for us,” he said. “The food there is very bad, and in the summer it’s very hot, and in the winter it’s very cold. We can leave for 12 hours, but we are not allowed to work.”

Negash added: “I applied for asylum, but I don’t have any hope because most asylum seekers are rejected. So, they told me I will have to go to Rwanda, Uganda, or Eritrea.”

Angesom Zerezghi, 26, also fled Eritrea, coming to Israel seeking political asylum seven years ago. He survived working odd jobs in Tel Aviv, until he was sent to Holot five months ago.

Instead of being deported to Africa, he said he hopes to find refuge in Europe, where he will be safer.

“After seven more months in Holot, I don’t know what will happen to me,” he said. “But if the government forces me to go back to Eritrea, I will die there.”

Amanuel Tsegazab, 26, was sent to Holot three months ago, after living in Eilat, where he worked as a dishwasher at a hotel for seven years.

“When I get out, if I can’t renew my visa, I will be deported, and I can’t go back,” he said, adding that it is difficult to obtain the necessary renewals.

“When you go to the visa place, you wait on line all day, and usually can’t get in and have to come back,” Tsegazab explained.

Jeremay Kehase, 33, has been in Holot for nearly one year, and said he fears for his future.

“I have to leave next month, and I am worried because the government has not accepted my asylum request,” he said.

“I can’t survive in my country.”

Source=http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/African-refugees-protest-deportations-ask-for-asylum-479710