Unbearably heartless
Libya accused of leaving woman and child to die
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 intercepted 160 Europe-bound migrants near the shores of the North African nation.
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 Libyan coastguard spokesman, said that a boat carrying 158 passengers including 34 women and nine children was stopped on Monday.
He said the migrants were given humanitarian and medical aid and were taken to a refugee camp in the western city of Khoms.
Oscar Camps, head of Proactiva Open Arms, blamed the Italian government’s co-operation 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. 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.
Italy’s hardline interior minister, Matteo Salvini, rejected the criticism. He said: ‘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.’