Libya, still violence against refugees but Italy does not question the bilateral pact on migration

Emilio Drudi

They pounded so hard that she lost the baby she was carrying for four months. Then he continued to bleed for a long time. Severe bleeding. It should have been taken to hospital, but no one has rescued. It 'been lying almost lifeless on a table, in a container, until her husband was transferred to the prison in Kuhefia, near Benghazi. It 'happened in the reception center of Ala Lamayr, Libya. Now that the refugee is an emergency without end. With the opening of fronts always new. It 'a week ago that reported at the Palais des Nations in Geneva by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the tragedy of Shagarab camp in eastern Sudan, where tens, hundreds of young people continue to disappear mysteriously, almost certainly abducted or however, ended up in the hands of slave traders. Now explodes the Libyan issue. It is this, indeed, proved in recent months, the most serious emergency. The silence that has surrounded for some time is not due to an improvement. On the contrary. It 'just happened that the attention has focused on other tragic cases came to light in the meantime. How to Sudan, in fact. Or as the acceleration of the policy of deportation of refugees from Israel. Now a series of reports came from Tripoli Libya agency Habeshia shows in the foreground.

At the heart of the complaints, once again, the detention centers where they are locked up thousands of refugees and migrants, young people intercepted the southern border after crossing the Sahara or blocked on the coast while trying to find a boarding clandestine Lampedusa and Sicily. Under what conditions we live in these prisons is now known. The hypocrisy of European governments, starting with the Italian one, called the camps. In fact it is true concentration camps in which prisoners are at the mercy of the police and Islamist militiamen who guard them. It 'a daily suffering, which is denied all rights. Ill-treatment, physical and psychological violence, torture, are the norm. Particularly for young women. Don Mussie Zerai, President of Habeshia last October presented an eloquent dossier to the European Commission for Human Rights and Home Affairs: an indictment of the whole system of slavery that in Libya are forced to abide by the applicants seekers and immigrants. But it is also a serious charge against Western governments, who pretend not to see and still do not consider that Tripoli has not signed the Geneva Convention of 1951 on the rights of refugees.
As has been reported in recent days has forced to upgrade with other serious incidents that have serious first report to the EU. This integration, which affects at least four of the 22 detention centers, will be sent to the European commission and national governments. And 'the record of torture and abuse in infinite Ghanfuda, Ala Lamayr, Hums and Kuhefia.

A Gianfuda, among other prisoners, there are thirty young people, 20 Eritrean and Ethiopian 10, which for nearly eight months have been like "forgotten". After the arrest would have to undergo a process or otherwise appear before a magistrate. Instead I ended up at the bottom of a cell at the mercy of the police, without being able to contact any representative of the humanitarian organizations assisting refugees. Habeshia luckily she managed to get in communication with a boy. He was desperate: "We are treated like criminals despite not having committed any crime - he said - remain locked up for days, without going out in the sunlight. There is prevented from any contact with the outside world: we only see the Libyan military guard. Our freedom, our dignity is trampled upon. Until a few weeks ago here with us there were some Somalis. They took them away. First in the center of Ala Lamayr and then somewhere else. We do not know where. They're gone. Maybe returnees, perhaps sent to some other prison. It is said to Sebha. We are afraid that sooner or later we touch the same fate. "

Lamayr to Ala, the first stage of the Somalis taken away from Gianfuda, detained more than 200 young people, mostly Eritreans and Ethiopians. "This center - notes Don Zerai - should be run by the Red Crescent. It seems instead that the real culprit is actually a Libyan intelligence agent, with armed men who do what they want: abuse, bullying, abuse of all kinds. In recent days, in particular, was given to two young women, both pregnant. One is the one that has lost the baby. All guests live in fear. Militants threaten them to get him to the same fate of the Somali sent to Sebha, a center for sick people not like in Libya. It multiplies the risk of being deported to Eritrea or Ethiopia, the country from which the refugees fled to seek international protection. But, especially in Eritrea, at the same time returning those guys risking jail or even worse, because the illegal expatriation is equivalent in practice to desertion from the ranks of the army. "

Then Hums, near Tripoli, one of the largest camps. In its dormitories and its cells crammed hundreds of refugees, mostly Eritreans, Ethiopians and Somalis but also to other African countries. Men, women and even children crammed into dirty rooms without adequate ventilation, often with very little water. "The worst fate touches as always girls, often victims of violence and sexual abuse - detects the dossier Habeshia - But all are at risk. The military, especially in the evening, have fun shooting at the rooms where refugees are being held. Often drunk, take one at random and the blood pounding in without reason or inventing a pretext or other. By a kind of sadistic pastime. It 'widespread use of tasers, to crush the resistance of the prisoners. Especially women, when they try to oppose the rapes. But when they arrive inspectors UN High Commission or some international NGOs, those instruments of torture are made to disappear. " Similar conditions are reported in the prison of Kuhefia Here, too, the prisoners are hundreds, cut off from the world.

"It 's the story of all time - says Don Zerai - Libya does the dirty work for Europe and Europe pretends not to see. But of all this suffering inflicted on hundreds of people someone will respond to. The agreements on the control of migration in the Mediterranean relate to different countries of the southern shore, but it is in Libya who have taken the worst face. It happened in the days of Gaddafi. E 'changed the government, but nothing has changed for the refugees. Still ill-treatment, abuse and torture. Continue the practice of using refugees as free labor, ie slaves. Continue the market of the militiamen who pays is likely to be released from these camps, even if they almost always be caught again in a few weeks and start the ordeal in another prison. The European Community has a huge responsibility in all this. Because of its inertia, its indifference to the choice of seal its borders. Indeed, 'esternalizzarli', these borders, to Libya, because the refugees do not reach even in view of its coasts. Relegated away so that nobody can see and hear. Because of all fall silent. Here, the European complicity in the tragedy of the refugees is expressed in this deafening silence: the victims at sea and in the prisons, torture, on the rapes, the violence. In this silence and bilateral agreements signed between individual Member States and some governments in North Africa. "

Italy is one of the countries that have relied on these bilateral agreements. With Libya. He did Berlusconi with Gaddafi. This was repeated with the new Monti government. General indifference, and in fact with the consensus of all political forces: there was only one party that has requested to withdraw, for example, the specific agreement on the control of migration signed by Interior Minister Anna Maria Registrars with his counterpart in Tripoli. Bersani, in an official visit to Libya in December, has not uttered a word for this problem: nothing on the need to withdraw or at least review the bilateral agreement, nothing about the detention centers, nothing about slavery in which they are relegated to hundreds of asylum seekers and migrants. Not surprisingly, moreover, some international institutions have complained that the political agenda of the sides in the running for Palazzo Chigi or almost no trace of human rights. So much so that the UN High Commission, even at the cost of being accused of "undue interference" has seen fit to urge all leaders to consider a priority in the refugee emergency, so far absent from the electoral debate and the interest of the future government. Amnesty went even further, launching a petition, addressed to all parties, respect for real, everyday the most basic rights of the last and "outsiders" to hear "the cry of the oppressed and discriminated against." Concrete answers so far I'm not coming. Neither the left nor the right.