COVID-19 outbreak in Libya could be 'catastrophic' for migrants

Source: Aljazeera
April 4 2020
By Faras Ghani

An outbreak of the coronavirus in Libya could be "truly catastrophic" for the internally displaced people (IDP) and close to 700,000 refugees and migrants in the war-torn country, the United Nations' agencies and experts have warned.

Libya has so far reported 17 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus, including one death. It has enforced a nationwide curfew from 2pm to 7am and prohibited intercity travel to curb the spread of the virus that has infected more than a million people worldwide and killed more than 60,000.

The large oil producer has been engulfed in chaos since 2011 when longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi was killed in a NATO-backed uprising.

Since 2014, the country has been split between two rival administrations: the internationally backed Government of National Accord (GNA) led by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj based in the capital, Tripoli, and the House of Representatives, allied to renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA), based in the country's east.
Bloody conflict

The plight of the Libyans and the migrants has been compounded by the continued fighting in the country. Since April 2019, forces loyal to Haftar have been fighting to seize Tripoli in an offensive that has killed hundreds and displaced 150,000 people.

The conflict has left Libya with "limited financial resources and shortages of basic equipment", while the "pandemic represents an additional challenge", the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) told Al Jazeera.

In an interview with Reuters news agency in March, the head of the Libyan National Center for Disease Control (NCDC), Badereldine al-Najar, said: "In light of the lack of preparations, I now consider Libya not in a position to confront this virus."

Intense bombardment shook Tripoli on Wednesday. Residents said the shelling was the worst in weeks, Reuters reported, shaking windows in the city centre. On Saturday, two people were also injured after a shell struck a hospital in the capital.

In recent years, Libya has also become a major gateway for African migrants and refugees hoping to reach Europe. Many of the migrants have fled poverty, conflict, war, forced labour, female genital mutilation, corrupt governments and personal threats, only to find themselves stranded in the middle of the Libyan conflict and also facing the threat of a potential coronavirus outbreak in the country.
'Conditions are dire'

A 2018 UN report highlighted that migrants and refugees are subjected to "unimaginable horrors" from the time they enter Libya, during their stay and in their attempts to cross the Mediterranean - if they reach that far - to make it to Europe.

"Detained asylum seekers are particularly vulnerable and exposed. They are staying in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions [in detention centres] and have access to very limited health assistance. Many centres are located in areas close to fighting," Tarik Argaz, a spokesman for the UNHCR in Libya, told Al Jazeera.

Almost 1,500 refugees and migrants are reported to be held in 11 "official" detention centres across the country. Thousands more are held in "private prisons" run by armed groups and traffickers where extortion, rape and abuse are rampant, according to the UN, medical agencies as well as the migrants and refugees.

Both types of centres are reported to be overcrowded with unhygienic and inhumane conditions and suffer from a shortage of food and drinking water.

"The conditions are dire. Hundreds of people are locked in crowded hangars with no access to proper sanitation facilities. Many of them have been detained for months or even years. Worry is all they know," Amira Rajab Elhemali, national field operations assistant for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), told Al Jazeera.

With very limited access to information - and almost no resources or healthcare - many are afraid of a potential outbreak of the virus.

"Migrants and refugees [in Sabha, southwestern Libya] are in the dark and they don't have access to information about the virus and how to protect themselves," a Nigerian man in Libya told Al Jazeera. "I discovered large numbers of migrants haven't gotten the true picture."

Another Nigerian man in Sabha told Al Jazeera that "the most vulnerable people will be in detention centres and in crowded places where they accept newly arrived migrants".

"Those places are run by Libyans and the smugglers, not any officials," he added. "These places are very crowded and unhygienic. If the epidemic happens, it will be disastrous. The Libyans know about the virus and have gloves and masks but they don't give it to the migrants."
Healthcare workers 'overloaded'

Libya was among the 27 countries "most vulnerable to emerging outbreaks" in the Global Health Security Index report published last month. It is also considered a high-risk country for COVID-19 by the World Health Organization. An increase in the infection rate would have a serious impact on civilians and the healthcare system, according to IOM spokesperson Safa Msehli.

"Doctors and first responders, who need to be trained on infection prevention and equipped with PPE, are routinely called back to the front lines to treat war wounded. Local community healthcare workers are also already overloaded," Maria Carolina, deputy head of sub-delegation for the Red Cross (ICRC) in Tripoli, told Al Jazeera.

"Even the most advanced healthcare systems in highly stable and resource-rich countries have struggled to cope. A further COVID-19 outbreak will have a tremendously adverse impact on medical staff in Libya."

Last month, the Human Rights Watch said Libya's healthcare system was "battered by intermittent armed conflicts and political divisions since 2011", warning that it will be unable to cope with large numbers of patients if infections spread.

Economic uncertainty

Earlier this week, Libyan authorities announced the release of 466 prisoners as part of measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus. But the detention centres are still crowded and for those stuck inside, as well as people in overcrowded accommodation, preventive measures like physical distancing are not an option.

After the imposition of the curfew, migrants have reported an increase in the prices for goods and accommodation, adding to their concerns which include seeking work on a daily basis while also facing reported abuse, robberies and non-payment at times.

"[During the day] there are some who still go to the bus stop and sit there if someone brings them any sort of assistance or they are asked for a job," a male migrant from Burkina Faso in Tripoli told Al Jazeera.

Given the increased police and military presence on the streets, most migrants and refugees stay indoors for fear of being detained. In addition to concern and fear, UNHCR's Argaz reported that rise in rent, food prices and basic commodities has made it more difficult for "those working in the informal sector to provide for themselves are unable to find work to secure their daily needs".

A male migrant from Chad told Al Jazeera that the "situation was very hard and everyone was struggling".

"People don't have income and houses are rented. Now is a very difficult time," he said.

Meanwhile, Libya has also closed its borders in response to the threat of a coronavirus outbreak, meaning that those who want to return home are not able to leave. Departing by sea is the only option but with Italy - the nearest European port along with Malta - undergoing a devastating COVID-19 outbreak, undertaking the dangerous sea voyage is even less appealing.

Since 2016, almost 12,000 refugees and migrants have drowned in the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe, according to the IOM's Missing Migrants project.

Migrants arriving in Greece say they have no protection against coronavirus

Source: Euronews

March 28 2020

By Mark Armstrong with AP

As the coronavirus crisis spreads, migrants attempting to enter Europe are in a vulnerable position with little or no help.

Just under a week ago, 56 people arrived on the Greek island of Lesbos.

The country is on lockdown but the migrants complain they've been given no protection.

"They said because of coronavirus you will be here 14 days," said this migrant from Afghanistan. "We are here 56 people, six African and all of us Afghans. They didn't give us gloves. They didn't give us any masks. "

The UN office on Lesbos described the camp living conditions as inhumane.

Last month neighbouring Turkey said it would no longer stop migrants from heading towards Greece.

The result is a border crisis between the two historic rivals. Greek authorities have said no migrants who arrived after March 1 will be able to apply for asylum. Instead, they will be detained pending deportation.

Camps on Lesbos and other islands of the eastern Aegean are already overcrowded and operating above their capacity.

The island's officials have complained there is no more room for new arrivals.

Greece 'deliberately' exploited migrants: Research

Thousands of displaced Syrians, Iraqis and Afghan's wait in squalid conditions to enter at a reception center on the island of Lesbos on October 14, 2015 in Mitilini , Greece.

Πηγή: CNBC
By Kalyeena Makortoff
9 March 2016

Successive Greek governments have deliberately adopted lax border controls in order to reap the benefits of exploitable labor, a new piece of research from the London School of Economics (LSE) has claimed.

A paper penned by assistant criminology professor Leonidas Cheliotis and released Wednesday suggests that over the past 25 years, Greek authorities have done little to reform ineffective migration policies in light of the economic and political benefits of keeping the status quo.

Cheliotis said that policies put forward by centrist parties like New Democracy and PASOK over the last two decades have maintained a high migrant population which has been crucial for filling low-prestige, poorly paid menial jobs, and holding up the shadow economy.

"Greek governments have engaged in the deliberate practice of allowing large waves of irregular migrants into the country in order to be able to exploit them once they're in, in order to satisfy the country's large informal labor market," he told CNBC in a phone interview.

Despite repeated claims to the contrary, the Greek state introduced policies and promoted practices that have kept the migrant population high by making piecemeal attempts at blocking irregular migration routes and failing to streamline processes like asylum claims, deportation or even voluntary repatriation programs, the paper explains.

Even with Greece viewed as a point of transit on the way to other European states, migrants have found themselves "trapped" by a system that relies on a highly-exploitable workforce, hemmed in by restrictive welfare and employment rights, and violent intimidation from the broader population, the report adds.

Eva Cosse, an assistant researcher with advocacy group Human Rights Watch, told CNBC that pressure on Greece to simultaneously take responsibility for both a disproportionate number of asylum seekers and for irregular migrants trying to enter EU borders "means that many asylum seekers find themselves trapped in what a 2008 Human Rights Watch report called 'a revolving door,'" she said.

"The failure of successive Greek governments to adopt coherent migration policies, chronic mismanagement of the asylum system, and, most recently, the deep economic crisis and resulting austerity have exacerbated what the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and others have described as a 'humanitarian crisis,'" she said.

The LSE report also claims that Alexis Tsipras' ruling Syriza party, which came to power in January 2015, may be prompting a shift just as the country faces unprecedented pressure from a ballooning migrant crisis.

Over 880,000 people illegally entered Greece in 2015, according to the EU border agency Frontex.

Cheliotis explained to CNBC that under Syriza, the legacy of deliberately exploitative migration policies has started to erode. While many of the realities on the ground have yet to change some of the harsh and discriminatory treatment of migrants and refugees landing on Greece's shores, Syriza has changed the tone of the national migrant debate.

But it may take longer to reverse reputational damages after migrants served as "scapegoats" for mainstream governments over the last two decades, he suggested, explaining there will still be difficulties in how outsiders are treated by the wider society.

The report comes on the heels of a tentative deal between the EU and Turkey to stem the flow of migrants to the bloc, with Ankara provisionally offering to take back migrants who enter Europe via their border.

The Greek Prime Minister's Office was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

Migrants in Libya: ‘They don’t treat us like humans’

Across Libya, 'irregular migrants' are detained in poor conditions where they face torture and other ill-treatment.

Πηγή: Amnesty International
By Diana Eltahawy
Sept 18 2012

“They [Libyans] don’t treat us like humans. For them, we are animals or slaves”, 23-year-old Nigerian woman detained in Khoms detention centre for “irregular migrants”.

On the evening of 12 September, a dispute between Eritrean and Nigerian detainees at the Khoms detention centre for “irregular migrants” had escalated into violence. During the chaos a group of Somalis chose their moment to escape.

The nine guards on duty were overwhelmed and they called in reinforcements.

According to detainees, some 10 vehicles with mounted machine guns arrived around 9pm and then men in military uniforms forced all Eritrean detainees into the courtyard for a beating.

A 29-year-old man from the Eritrean capital Asmara, who has spent six months in various detention centres across Libya, told Amnesty International that one man in military uniform hit him on the head with a metal bar and deliberately stepped on his hand with his military boots.

Other Eritreans said they were forced to lie down on the ground and were hit with rifle-butts or metal wires.

The severest beatings were reserved for the recaptured Somali escapees.

Mohamed Abdallah Mohamed, 19, still had visible injuries on his left shoulder, legs and face when I saw him on 14 September after I arrived at the centre having heard reports of shootings.

The Somali said that he was kicked, dragged on the ground, punched in the eye and beaten with the backs of rifles and sticks, after being caught by some seven people.

He was eventually taken to the hospital by detention centre guards, but complained of inadequate health care, continuing severe pain and an inability to see properly from his left eye.

Sixteen-year-old Somali Khadar Mohamed Ali was also recaptured, stepped on, and beaten with sticks and rifle-butts by men in military dress.

Following the escape attempt, a third Somali, Khadar Warsame, 21, ended up at the Intensive Care Unit of Khoms Hospital. He is receiving treatment for a head injury.

In the hospital, the reason for his injury is marked as a “fall”, but an impartial, independent and full investigation needs to be carried out into the violence that engulfed the Khoms detention centre on 12 September to establish the full truth.

Those reasonably suspected of committing acts of torture or other ill-treatment against detainees should be investigated and, where there is sufficient evidence, brought to justice. While their cases are being investigated, they should be suspended from duties where they can carry out similar abuses.

During a previous visit to Khoms, detainees – mainly from Sub-Saharan African countries like Cameroon, Chad, Eritrea, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan – recounted their long list of grievances: overcrowding, inadequate nutrition, no regular access to healthcare, lack of recreational activities and outdoor time, occasional beatings, racism, insults and poor hygiene.

Their top concern remained that they were detained indefinitely and did not know what fate awaited them.

Detention centre guards and administrators also expressed concern about the lack of resources to meet the needs of the some 370 detainees including about 30 women.

They complained about delays in repatriating migrants and the frequent escape attempts.

The detention facility is managed by the Department of Combating Irregular Migration under the Ministry of Interior, but police officers and guards-on-duty rely on local armed groups nominally part of the Libyan army to contain riots and recapture escapees.

Since the toppling of the al-Gaddafi government last year, armed militias have filled the security vacuum left by the collapsed state and assumed a number of law enforcement functions.

The central government has shown itself unable – and at times unwilling – to rein them in. In some instances, the government continues to rely on armed militias to maintain law and order, turning a blind eye to their excesses. Armed militias still detain suspects outside the framework of the law and torture or otherwise abuse them.

This security vacuum, the proliferation of weapons and a judicial system in near paralysis leaves foreign nationals in Libya particularly vulnerable to abuse.

They have nowhere to turn to seek justice and redress. Their situation is unlikely to improve until the Libyan authorities take a number of steps including the ratification of the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the introduction of a functioning asylum system and reform of legislation regulating the entry and stay of foreign nationals in Libya.

The Libyan authorities also need to put an end to the violence and other abuses perpetrated against foreign nationals – whether by law enforcement agencies, militias or regular Libyan nationals – and take serious measures to address the prevailing racist and xenophobic attitudes in Libya.

For now, foreign nationals particularly those in an irregular situation remain at the mercy of any Libyan who crosses their path.

If they are lucky, they secure paid work.

Those less fortunate can find themselves forced to work for free, arrested or handed over to a militia, beaten and detained indefinitely in appalling conditions.

An Egyptian national who has lived in Libya for years told Amnesty International about his detention and torture after an argument with his Libyan employer over payment.

He was arrested at his Tripoli home in the middle of the night by three armed men. At their militia’s base, he said he was tied, suspended from a metal bar, and beaten with cables, water pipes and wires all over his body including on the soles of his feet.

He was later handed over to a detention facility for “irregular migrants”. He is hoping that a Libyan acquaintance will come to “sponsor” him and secure his release.

Otherwise, he – like thousands of others – risks indefinite detention and, ultimately, deportation without recourse to appeal.

Libyans Turn Wrath on Dark-Skinned Migrants

Prisoners from sub-Saharan countries being held in a cell at a police station in Tripoli, Libya

Πηγή: New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
September 4 2011

TRIPOLI, Libya — As rebel leaders pleaded with their fighters to avoid taking revenge against “brother Libyans,” many rebels were turning their wrath against migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, imprisoning hundreds for the crime of fighting as “mercenaries” for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi without any evidence except the color of their skin.

Many witnesses have said that when Colonel Qaddafi first lost control of Tripoli in the earliest days of the revolt, experienced units of dark-skinned fighters apparently from other African countries arrived in the city to help subdue it again. Since Western journalists began arriving in the city a few days later, however, they have found no evidence of such foreign mercenaries.

Still, in a country with a long history of racist violence, it has become an article of faith among supporters of the Libyan rebels that African mercenaries pervaded the loyalists’ ranks. And since Colonel Qaddafi’s fall from power, the hunting down of people suspected of being mercenaries has become a major preoccupation.

Human rights advocates say the rebels’ scapegoating of blacks here follows a similar campaign that ultimately included lynchings after rebels took control of the eastern city of Benghazi more than six months ago. The recent roundup of Africans, though, comes at a delicate moment when the new provisional government is trying to establish its credibility. Its treatment of the detainees is emerging as a pivotal test of both the provisional government’s commitment to the rule of law and its ability to control its thousands of loosely organized fighters. And it is also hoping to entice back the thousands of foreign workers needed to help Libya rebuild.

Many Tripoli residents — including some local rebel leaders — now often use the Arabic word for “mercenaries” or “foreign fighters” as a catchall term to refer to any member of the city’s large underclass of African migrant workers. Makeshift rebel jails around the city have been holding African migrants segregated in fetid, sweltering pens for as long as two weeks on charges that their captors often acknowledge to be little more than suspicion. The migrants far outnumber Libyan prisoners, in part because rebels say they have allowed many Libyan Qaddafi supporters to return to their homes if they are willing to surrender their weapons.

The detentions reflect “a deep-seated racism and anti-African sentiment in Libyan society,” said Peter Bouckaert, a researcher with Human Rights Watch who visited several jails. “It is very clear to us that most of those detained were not soldiers and have never held a gun in their life.”

In a dimly lighted concrete hangar housing about 300 glassy-eyed, dark-skinned captives in one neighborhood, several said they were as young as 16. In a reopened police station nearby, rebels were holding Mohamed Amidu Suleiman, a 62-year-old migrant from Niger, on allegations of witchcraft. To back up the charges, they produced a long loop of beads they said they had found in his possession.

He was held in a segregated cell with about 20 other prisoners, all African migrants but one. “We have no water in the bathroom!” one prisoner shouted to a guard. “Neither do we!” the guard replied. Most of the city has been without running water to bathe, flush toilets or wash clothes since a breakdown in the water delivery system around the time that Colonel Qaddafi fled. But the stench, and fear, of the migrants was so acute that guards handed visitors hospital masks before they entered their cell.

Outside the migrants’ cage, a similar number of Libyan prisoners occupy a less crowded network of rooms. Osama el-Zawi, 40, a former customs officer in charge of the jail, said his officers had allowed most of the Libyan Qaddafi supporters from the area to go home. “We all know each other,” he said. “They don’t pose any kind of threat to us now. They are ashamed to go out in the streets.”

But the “foreign fighters,” he said, were more dangerous. “Most of them deny they were doing it,” he said, “but we found some of them with weapons.”

A guard chimed in: “If we release the mercenaries, the people in the street will hurt them.”

In the crowded prison hangar, in the Tajura neighborhood, the rebel commander Abdou Shafi Hassan, 34, said they were holding only a few dozen Libyans — local informers and prisoners of war — but kept hundreds of Africans in the segregated pen. On a recent evening, the Libyan captives could be seen rolling up mats after evening prayers in an outdoor courtyard just a short distance from where the Africans lay on the concrete floor in the dark.

Several said they had been picked up walking in the streets or in their homes, without weapons, and some said they were dark-skinned Libyans from the country’s southern region. “We don’t know why we are here,” said Abdel Karim Mohamed, 29.

A guard — El Araby Abu el-Meida, a 35-year-old mechanical engineer before he took up arms in the rebellion — almost seemed to apologize for the conditions. “We are all civilians, and we don’t have experience running prisons,” he said.

Most of the prisoners were migrant farm workers, he said. “I have a Sudanese worker on my farm and I would not catch him,” he said, adding that if an expected “investigator” concluded that the other black prisoners were not mercenaries they would be released.

In recent days, the provisional government has started the effort to centralize the processing and detention of prisoners. Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the leader of the Tripoli military council, said that as recently as Wednesday he had extended his protection to a group of 10 African workers who had come to his headquarters seeking refuge.

“We don’t agree with arresting people just because they’re black,” he said. “We understand the problem, but we’re still in a battle area.”

Mohamed Benrasali, a member of the provisional government’s Tripoli stabilization team, acknowledged the problem but said it would “sort itself out,” as it had in his hometown, Misurata.

“People are afraid of the dark-skinned people, so they are all suspect,” Mr. Benrasali said, noting that residents had also rounded up dark-skinned migrants in Misurata after the rebels took control. He said he had advised the Tripoli officials to set up a system to release any migrants who could find Libyans to vouch for them.

With thousands of semi-independent rebel fighters still roaming the streets for any hidden threats, though, controlling the impulse to round up migrants may not be easy.

Outside a former Qaddafi intelligence building, rebels held two dark-skinned captives at knifepoint, bound together at the feet with arms tied behind their backs, lying in a pile of garbage, covered with flies. Their captors said they had been found in a taxi with ammunition and money. The terrified prisoners, 22-year-olds from Mali, initially said they had no involvement in the Qaddafi militias and then, as a captor held a knife near their heads, they began supplying the story of forced induction into the Qaddafi forces that they appeared to think was wanted.

Nearby, armed fighters stood over about a dozen other migrants squatting against a fence. Their captors were drilling them at gunpoint in rebel chants like “God is Great” and “Free Libya!”