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.”
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