UN calls for Libyan migrant detention centres to be shut

The United Nations is calling for all migrant detention centers in Libya to be shut down following last week’s airstrike on one centre that killed more than 50 refugees and migrants.

Around 120 migrants were at the Tajoura Detention Centre when it was hit on July 3, killing both women and children. A UN official said the attack could constitute a war crime.

The UN says that these “awful” detention centers are not safe for migrants, many of whom are African refugees who were caught by the Libyan Coast Guard in the Mediterranean Sea and locked up. These detention facilities have been linked to documented cases of human trafficking, forced labour, and disappearances.

Separately, in response to the airstrike Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles put out a call for the EU to help evacuate migrants from Libya’s detention centers.

They are urging European Union foreign ministers meeting at the Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels on Monday July 15 to call on Libyan authorities to shut the facilities.

“The horrific attack on the Tajoura detention centre last week has once more showed the mortal danger that women, men and children locked up in Libya are exposed to,” explained Matteo de Bellis, a researcher on migration and asylum at Amnesty International.

“Rather than keeping their eyes closed in the face of the inhuman conditions, torture, rape and other abuse refugees and migrants face in Libya’s detention centres, EU governments should urgently set up safe routes out of Libya for them, and ensure that people rescued in the central Mediterranean are not returned to Libya.” More migrants have been moved to a detention centre in Libya’s capital, despite a risk it could be hit again which led to survivors being evacuated, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Friday.

Around 95 migrants were moved to the Tajoura centre in Tripoli on Thursday, some rounded up in the local community and others transferred from another detention centre in the city, the aid group said.

Earlier in the week migrants left at the centre after the July 3 bombing − some of whom were sleeping in the open for fear of another strike − were either released or evacuated, following appeals from the United Nations.

An official at the Tajoura centre who asked not to be named said that following the evacuations, “we have resumed work and started receiving more (migrants).”

He declined to give more details.

The centre was hit as forces loyal to eastern-based commander Khalifa Haftar intensified their efforts to wrest control of Tripoli from forces aligned with the internationally recognised government, which is based in the capital.

The fighting is the latest escalation in a conflict that developed after former leader Muammer Gaddafi was toppled in a Nato-backed uprising in 2011.

People smugglers exploited the turmoil to send hundreds of thousands of migrants on dangerous journeys across the central Mediterranean, though the number of crossings dropped sharply from 2017 amid an EU-backed push to block departures.

Libyan National Army (LNA) launched an offensive on Tripoli in early April, which soon stalled. The fighting has left more than 1,000 dead, including more than 100 civilians, according to the World Health Organisation.

Migrant detention centres are nominally under the government but often controlled by armed groups. Aid workers and rights groups say abuse including beating and forced labour is rife, and have long appealed for their closure.

But the centres have continued to operate, repeatedly caught in the crossfire of fighting whilst receiving new arrivals from boats intercepted by Libya’s EU-backed coastguard. The Tajoura centre, which is next to a miliary camp, was also hit by a projectile in May.

The United Nations said last week it had information that guards had shot at migrants at Tajoura as they tried to flee the air strike. The interior ministry in Tripoli denied the report.

This week, 419 migrants, including around 90 who had just been intercepted at sea, left the Tajoura centre for a facility run by the U.N. refugee agency. It tries to evacuate refugees and asylum seekers from Libya, though the process is slow.

Sam Turner, MSF’s Libya head of mission, said it was an “outstanding contradiction” for migrants to be released from the centre in recognition that it was not safe, only for more to be brought in days later.

Agencies