Asylum seekers abandoned in Libya

The Jesuit Refugee Service is appealing to the EU and the international community to take immediate and concrete action to provide resettlement opportunities for some 2,000 Eritrean asylum seekers stranded in Libya.

These asylum seekers have made a desperate appeal for help to the Catholic Church in Tripoli and Bishop Giovanni Martinelli, Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli, has urged the international community to rescue them by providing a way out of Libya.

As tension escalates in Libya and states rush to evacuate their nationals, sub-Saharan African asylum seekers are all but forgotten.

JRS Malta joined the appeal of the Church in Libya and urged Malta, the EU and the international community not to forget these asylum seekers who did not have anyone to protect them, least of all their country of origin, which they fled in fear of their life.

“Unable to obtain the protection of their government, asylum seekers are stuck in Libya, where they are extremely vulnerable to attacks,” JRS Malta director, Fr Joseph Cassar, said.

“In the past days we have heard reports of innocent sub-Saharan Africans being beaten, stabbed and even killed as they are wrongly suspected of being mercenaries hired by Muammar Gaddafi to kill the Libyan people.”

While commending Malta’s effective response to the crisis by facilitating the evacuation of thousands of foreign nationals seeking to leave Libya, it called on the government to take urgent measures, “as an extraordinary humanitarian gesture”, to offer safe transit to asylum seekers who needed to leave Libya and reach a place of refuge.

“It is clear that urgent, multilateral action is needed as Malta cannot do this alone,” Fr Cassar added.