Unbearably heartless
Libya accused of leaving woman and toddler to drown in Med
LIBYA’S coastguard was yesterday accused of abandoning two women and a toddler in the Mediterranean Sea after destroying the boat they were in.
A migrant aid group found the bodies of one of the women and a toddler amid the drifting remains of a migrant vessel headed to Europe.
Yesterday Proactiva Open Arms, a Spanish rescue group, plucked a second woman from the sea alive.
It came after the coastguard had intercepted 160 Europe- bound migrants near the shores of the North African nation. It was claimed they had refused to board a Libyan vessel back to the war- ravaged nation and so were left there.
The organisation published heart- breaking images of the rescue and the wreckage 90 miles from the Libyan coast.
It accused both a merchant ship sailing in international waters and Libya’s coastguard of failing to help the three migrants.
Earlier, Ayoub Gassim, a spokesman for the Libyan coastguard spokesman, said that a boat carrying 158 passengers including 34 women and nine children had been stopped on Monday off the coast of the western town of Khoms. He said the migrants were given humanitarian and medical aid and were taken to a refugee camp in Khoms.
Oscar Camps, head of Proactiva Open Arms, blamed the Italian government’s cooperation with Libyan authorities for the death of the woman and the toddler.
‘ This is the direct consequence of contracting armed militias to make the rest of Europe believe that Libya is a state, a government and a safe country,’ he said. In a video posted on Twitter he said the two women and the toddler had refused to board the Libyan vessels with the rest of the intercepted migrants.
He said they were abandoned in the sea after the coastguard destroyed the migrants’ boat.
Up to Sunday, 1,443 people had died or were missing this year on the Mediterranean route, according to the UN migration agency.
Libya has emerged as a major transit point to Europe for those fleeing poverty and civil war in Africa and the Middle East. Italy’s new populist government has vowed to halt the influx of migrants and has given aid to Libyan authorities to do that.
But human rights activists have sharply criticised that assistance, saying migrants being returned to Libya are at risk of facing beatings, abuse, rape and slavery.
Both Italy and Malta have blocked aid groups from operating rescue boats, either by refusing them entry to their ports or by impounding their vessels and putting their crews under investigation. Italy’s hardline interior minister Matteo Salvini rejected the criticism.
‘ Lies and insults from some foreign NGO confirm that we are right: reducing the departures and disembarkations means reducing deaths and reducing the earnings of those who speculate on clandestine migration,’ he said.
The International Organisation for Migration said yesterday that the overall number of migrants and refugees entering Europe by sea this year totals 50,872, less than half the 109,746 who had come in by mid- July last year.