The Libyan coastguard has enjoyed all kind of support from European governments in exchange for preventing refugees and migrants from reaching European shores - even if such cooperation results in torture.
Farah, a young man from Somalia, his wife and newborn daughter had been at sea for 12 hours when the Libyan coastguard intercepted their dinghy. The couple had fled Libya after enduring several months of torture in a hangar where Farah was beaten and his wife raped in an attempt by Libyan gangs to extract ransom money from their relatives.
This is just one of several heartbreaking stories of violence and unimaginable cruelty I heard last month in Medenine, a small town in southern Tunisia, which has received a low but steady number of refugees and migrants escaping a hellish life across the border. “Sometimes the guards drink and smoke, and then beat people. The guards also ask people to pay money to release them, but if you don’t pay, they beat you. You would see the guards, both militia and police, coming in and beating people who had not paid.
European governments that have acted for years in a frenzy, pushing through policies designed to stop arrivals in Europe whatever the human cost, should come to their senses, at least now that crossings are very low.
“From the big ship they were making calls, but said: ‘Sorry, we can’t take you, it’s not my fault, orders are that Libyans will come to take you’. Meanwhile, I could see people dying on the other boat, pieces of boat were floating and bodies too. [By the time] a small Libyan ship came to get us...all the people on the other dinghy had died.”
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