The report, which was published in recent days by the German newspaper “Der Spiegel”, talked about an immigrant from Mali who managed to reach Europe, where she recounted how she and dozens of girls were raped by camp guards.
She said that she was detained with 170 women in a poorly ventilated place with no clean bedding, and food was provided once a day with juice packets in which militia members put medicine to subject women to rape without resistance, noting that women gave birth to children.
In July, Amnesty International issued a report entitled “Nobody Will Look for You: Forcibly Returned from the Sea to Arbitrary Detention in Libya”, which spoke of detainees being subjected to sexual extortion, and of hundreds of forcibly disappeared, while two women attempted suicide.
Huge blackmail network
And Der Spiegel had previously published a report in 2019 conveying testimonies from migrants who arrived in Europe, if they asserted that they had been blackmailed into offering a ransom for the release of their relatives detained in the camps.
This extortion, which the magazine described as a “massive blackmail trade” in Libya, is based on militia members deliberately torturing detainees and making them contact their relatives in Europe to complain about their bad conditions, and then the gangs demand a ransom from them to get them out of this suffering.
Human rights activist Asmaa Zughaib accused officials in the West of turning a blind eye to what is happening inside those camps, noting that reports confirmed that many women had children without their parents knowing, and we are talking about 15 children, and that sexual assaults also affected children.
She told Sky News Arabia that human rights organizations in Libya were unable to enter the camps to find out the extent of the disaster, but those who succeeded in escaping or getting out of those camps documented what was happening inside them.
A threat to Libya
Libyan political analyst Ibrahim Al-Fitouri comments on the foregoing that the best solution is to stop the entry of migrants into these camps, and transfer the budget granted to them to United Nations bodies, provided that it is spent to return these migrants to their countries to reduce this disaster.
Al-Fitouri added to “Sky News Arabia” that these camps are a “stigma” on the Libyans, stressing that “any Libyan will not accept what is happening to the women inside.”
Libyans have previously warned of the danger of being silent about the introduction of illegal immigrants into Libya, especially as their file could turn into a tool of international pressure on the country.
Ahmed Hamza, head of the Libyan National Human Rights Committee, criticized foreign countries’ focus on preventing migrants from crossing from Libya to Europe, without paying attention to the risks of their illegal entry and stay in Libya, noting that all that matters to Europe is to stop their flow to its shores.
He called for the support of the border guards on the southern borders, which are considered the source of migrants from Africa, warning that their influx and survival may drag Libya to international trials and the granting of compensation to the families of the victims.
According to the UNHCR, it has registered 42,458 refugees and asylum-seekers in Libya, while the United Nations says there are more than 669,000 migrants.
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