NUMBER OF MIGRANTS HELD IN LIBYA DOUBLES AS EU FORCES DOOR SHUT

▶ UN agency says more than 9,000 people are left at risk of human rights abuses as detention centre rolls rise

Migrant numbers in Libya’s official detention centres doubled in the past three months after European states took stronger measures to cut the influx, the UN’s migration agency said.

The number of people detained in conditions that leave them susceptible to human rights abuses has surged from 5,500 to 9,300, the International Organisation for Migration said this week. This does not account for the many more held at unofficial and militia-run centres where the likelihood of abuse is far higher.

The European Union has empowered Libya’s coastguard, better equipping them to intercept migrant boats and return them to the unstable north African country. The coastguard – a mix of official boats and government-sanctioned militias – has been accused of abuses.

“Fewer people travelling to Europe or taking boats does not mean there are less migrants. It means the opposite. They are stranded,” said Othmann Belbeisi, IOM chief of mission in Libya. He said smuggling networks were becoming stronger and more organised.

The IOM estimates there are 662,000 migrants in Libya this year, 10 per cent of whom are minors.

“Working with the Libyan coastguard, we see the good and the bad. We need to support those who are doing a good job and we need to be prosecuting anyone who commits human rights violations,” Mr Belbeisi said.

He said that unless there was a change to the policy that led to migrants rescued by the Libyan coastguard being returned to the country, there would continue to be overcrowding at detention centres.

His comments came amid a row between the Libyan coastguard and the Spanish NGO and rescue group Proactiva Open Arms over the death of two migrants. The NGO accused Libya’s coastguard of abandoning three people in the Mediterranean Sea, including a woman and a toddler who died, after the coastguard intercepted 160 Europe-bound migrants off Libya.

Proactiva said it found a woman alive and a toddler and another person dead in the remains of a migrant ship drifting 80 nautical miles from Libya’s coast. The group’s head, Oscar Camps, said the blame lay with Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini and his hardline approach to migration.

Libyan coastguard spokesman Ayoub Gassim said: “All disasters happening in the sea are caused by human traffickers who are only interested in profit and the presence of such irresponsible, non-governmental groups in the region.”

This week, eight migrants, mostly children, suffocated in a refrigerator lorry carrying about 100 people in the town of Zuwara, 100 kilometres west of Tripoli.

“We don’t have enough support or equipment, but continue to find holding rooms for migrants pre-departure. There has definitely been an increase in [migrant] activity in the area. When the migrants are found they are then processed and sent to detention centres,” Col Aymed Absa, the commander of Zuwara’s security directorate, told The National.

Overall, the number of migrants arriving in Europe by sea this year is 50,872, less than half the 109,746 who went by mid-July last year, the IOM said. In the same period in 2016, 241,859 migrants travelled to Europe.

Off the north coast of Cyprus on Wednesday evening, 19 migrants drowned and as many as 30 were missing after their boat sank, local security forces said.

The boat was carrying 150 people, reportedly Syrians, when it went down off the coast of the Turkish Cypriot-controlled portion of the island .

The Turkish coastguard said that the accident took place 30 kilometres off the shore of northern Cyprus. It said that 103 survivors were rescued.

One was taken by helicopter to Cyprus in grave medical condition, the GKK said.

The others were taken by boats to the port of Tasucu in Turkey’s southern Mersin region, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said.

The dead were taken to Tasucu for autopsies. One of the survivors was a three-year-old child, while a woman who drowned was pregnant, the

Hurriyet newspaper said. Search efforts were under way, with commercial vessels taking part, according to reports.

Turkey’s DHA news agency said those on board the vessel were Syrians seeking to go to Europe.