Amnesty International has lambasted EU member states for abandoning some 5,000 sub-Saharan refugees and asylum seekers on the Libyan borders with Egypt and Tunisia during the North African conflict.
“We have witnessed an abysmal response to the plight of displaced refugees on Europe’s doorstep,” Amnesty’s EU office director Nicolas Berger said yesterday, pointing out that the EU’s failure was particularly glaring given the participation of some European countries in the Nato operations in Libya.
“They have been party to the very conflict that has been one of the main causes of the involuntary movement of people,” he said.He was speaking ahead of an EU Justice and Home Affairs Ministers meeting on Thursday which he intends to lobby for action on the matter.
The Amnesty report also pointes to the vigilante violence and revenge attacks carried out on sub-Saharan Africans by anti-Gaddafi rebels who suspected them of being mercenaries recruited by the regime.
“When the problems started, local people carried guns and accused us of being mercenaries”, Hafiz, a young man from Darfur, Sudan, told AI delegates in the Choucha camp on the Tunisian border.
“They came in cars and would take our belongings. They would fire their guns in the air. One night Gaddafi’s guards came to the house and searched us. That is when I realised there is no security and it is better to go to a safe place.”
Mahjoob Altaher, another Darfuri refugee, at the Saloum border post in Egypt, recounted similar experiences.
“When the conflict started I was living in Benghazi. I stayed home for a month because I saw on the news and heard from Sudanese friends that the ‘thuuwar’ – revolutionaries, as opposition fighters are commonly known – were targeting dark-skinned people.
“My Filipino neighbour did not face problems because he is white; he would buy us food. On 17 March 2011, before sunset, three or four armed rebels entered the house. They hit me in the face with the end of the gun, then took our money, passports and mobiles,” Mahjoob said.
Another asylum seeker from Ethiopia said that when opposition forces came to his home, he was beaten and taken to a court in Benghazi.
“There were 40 to 50 people in the court’s hall, mostly from Chad, Sudan and Nigeria. People would beat us all over the body with the end and the belt of their guns. They would take one person after another inside the rooms. I could hear the screaming of the people inside and I could see marks on their body after they came out; I believe they were being tortured.
“A Chadian national was shot in the shoulder; he was bleeding and had no medical help. The people around me would tell me to forget about my life, that we were dead. After six or seven hours my employer came to the court to confirm that I was not a mercenary. I was released,” he said.
According to Amnesty International, as the violence increased, thousands of refugees and asylum-seekers tried to leave Libya. Many of those who fled Libya to Egypt and Tunisia said they were stopped at check-points by armed men, robbed of their possessions, and in some cases beaten. Some witnessed other Sub-Saharan Africans being shot.
Lashing out at the lack of solidarity being shown, Amnesty accused the EU of abandoning these people without offering any resettlement.
Despite an appeal made by the EU Home Affairs Commissioner a few months ago, only eight EU member states offered to take some 700 refugees from these camps while another 250 are to be taken from Malta after reaching the island on boats following the eruption of violence in Libya.
Mr Berger said that EU Home Affairs Ministers must urgently address the resettlement issue, putting it prominently on the agenda of their meeting on Thursday and making sure to make the necessary resettlement pledges.