Migrant ‘abuse’ deal extended
Human rights advocates and aid groups have slammed Italy for deciding to extend a deal that facilitates the return of Europe-bound migrants to detention centres in Libya where they are at risk of getting raped and tortured.
Amnesty International said the Italian government’s plan to renew the deal for another three years today made it ‘‘complicit in this abuse’’.
A 2017 accord between Italy and Libya included equipment and training for the Libyan coastguard to intercept migrants who set off in smugglers’ boats from the shores of the northern African country.
Migrants who get caught are returned to overcrowded detention facilities. United Nations refugee officials have said that migrants held in the centres are frequently beaten, raped and denied adequate food.
Doctors Without Borders, which with another humanitarian group operates a ship that rescues migrants from the Mediterranean Sea, joined the chorus of objections to the deal’s renewal. It said Italy’s aid contributed to trapping ‘‘innocent and vulnerable’’ people in war-ravaged Libya.
The human rights commissioner for the Council of Europe, Dunja Mijatovic, expressed ‘‘regret that Italian authorities have not scrapped that agreement or – as a minimum – changed its terms’’.
Citing the worsening armed conflict between rival governments in Libya, she said ‘‘a great amount of evidence continues to point to serious human rights violations faced there by migrants and asylum seekers’’.
Mijatovic called on Italy and other countries that are members of the Council of Europe, a human rights body based in France, to work for the release of people detained in the Libyan centres and to facilitate the creation of safe transfers of migrants to Europe.
Doctors Without Borders and Amnesty International noted that the fighting in Libya had forced the UN refugee agency this week to suspend operations at a transit facility in Tripoli due to safety concerns.