After escaping with hundreds of others from an overcrowded Libyan detention center where guards shot and killed six migrants, Sudanese refugee Halima Mokhtar Bshara said she just wants to leave the country.
“They attacked us, humiliated us, many of us were wounded,” the 27-year-old from Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region said. “We’re at the end of our tether.”
The al-Mabani facility in the capital, Tripoli, was at triple its capacity after police raids against migrants last week, when guards shot and killed the six people on Friday.
Photo: AP
The shooting was “related to overcrowding and the terrible, very tense situation,” the International Organization for Migration said.
About 2,000 migrants and refugees escaped in the chaos, including Bshara and her three children.
The Libyan Ministry of Interior on Saturday denied any “excessive use of force” against escaping migrants.
It said that as “hundreds” of people being held at the detention center escaped, “a stampede” occurred during which “an illegal migrant died and others were wounded, including several police officers.”
A “security operation” following the escape “was handled professionally and without excessive use of force,” a statement said.
Bshara was among hundreds taking part in a sit-in in front of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Tripoli on Saturday.
Dozens of destitute migrants and refugees, including young children, have been sleeping rough in front of the building for days, in the hope of receiving assistance.
“We’re extremely tired, but we have nowhere to go, we are even being chased off the pavement,” Bshara said tearfully.
“For our security, we ask to be evacuated,” a banner at the site said, while another read: “Libya is not a safe country for refugees.”
In chaos since its 2011 revolution, Libya has long been a favored departure point for migrants — many from sub-Saharan Africa — fleeing violence and poverty in their own countries and hoping to reach Europe.
From Oct. 1, Libyan authorities began raiding multiple houses and makeshift shelters in a poor suburb of Tripoli, in what it said was an anti-drug operation.
The UN said the raids, mostly targeting irregular migrants, left at least one person dead, 15 wounded and saw more than 5,000 detained.
Doctors Without Borders decried “violent mass arrests.”
“There were 39 of us living in the same building” before the raids, Bshara said.
At first, she said she and her family evaded authorities by hiding in a well, but they were eventually found and placed in the al-Mabani detention center.
There were so many people there that it was impossible to sleep, said Ismail Derrab, another of those who escaped the facility on Friday.
“We have nothing. We would like to get out of this country,” the young Sudanese man said.
Official migrant detention centers in Libya are riddled with corruption and violence, including sexual assault, the UN and human rights groups say.
The UNHCR had said before Friday’s shooting deaths that it was “increasingly alarmed about the humanitarian situation for asylum seekers and refugees in Libya.”
It temporarily suspended its activities at its Tripoli office this week, citing mounting tensions.
“We renew our appeal to the Libyan authorities to allow the resumption of humanitarian flights out of the country, which have been suspended for almost a year,” it said in the earlier statement.
Waffagh Driss, another Sudanese migrant, said that Libyan authorities had targeted migrants “according to the color of their skin.”
“The situation in Tripoli for black people is terrible,” the 31-year-old said. “We are exposed to every kind of danger. Our life is at risk... I am asking to leave Libya because it is not a safe country.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS