GENEVA, Switzerland — Migrants detained in Libya face horrific
abuse, with women especially facing
sexual violence, and often forced to submit
to rape in exchange for food, UN investigators said Wednesday.
اضافة اعلان
In a fresh report, the Independent Fact-Finding
Mission on Libya reiterated that the worst crimes under international law were
likely being committed in the war-ravaged country, with migrant women suffering
some of the worst abuse.
“The mission has reasonable grounds to believe that
the crimes against humanity of murder, torture, imprisonment, rape, enforced
disappearance, and other inhumane acts have been committed in several places of
detention in Libya since 2016,” it said.
Migrants are routinely detained by authorities,
human traffickers and others in Libya — a key departure point for tens of
thousands of people mainly from sub-Saharan Africa hoping to reach Europe.
Human traffickers have profited from the chaos that
has raged since the 2011 toppling and killing of Libyan dictator
Muammar Gaddafi.
Talks between rival Libyan governments are being
held in Geneva this week over the rules for long-awaited elections, with an aim
to end the chaos.
‘Inhumane acts’
The fact-finding mission
report, to be presented to the
UN Human Rights Council next week, said it had
gathered broad evidence of “the systematic use of prolonged arbitrary
detention” of migrants in Libya.
The investigators, who made several trips to Libya,
described how migrants in detention face “acts of murder, torture, rape, and
other inhumane acts.”
The report highlighted “sexual violence at the hands
of traffickers and smugglers, often with the aim of extorting families.”
“The mission has also documented cases of rape in
places of detention or captivity whereby migrant women are forced to have sex
in order to survive, in exchange for food or other essential items,” it said.
In fact, the known risk of sexual violence is
considered to great, the report said, that “some migrant women and girls get
fitted with a contraceptive implant before traveling there to avoid unwanted
pregnancy due to such violence.”
‘No choice’
The investigators relayed
some heartbreaking stories heard from migrants in Libya.
One woman, who was held in the northern town of
Ajdabiya, “described how her captors demanded sex in exchange for access to
water she direly needed to wash her six-month-old sick child’s soiled clothes,”
the report said.
“I let them rape me. I had no choice. It was for my
daughter. I could not leave her like that,” she said, according to the report.
The fact-finding mission, which was created by the
UN Human Rights Council in June 2020, will see its mandate expire in a few
days.
But a group of African countries has presented a
draft resolution to the council that would allow it to continue its work for
another nine months.
In a big report presented last October, the
investigators concluded that crimes against humanity had likely been committed
in the country, including in detention centers and against migrants.
They have drafted a list of individuals and groups
believed to be behind those crimes, but it remains confidential.
They are due to present another report in a few
days providing more details on crimes committed in the town of Tarhuna,
southeast of Tripoli, where dozens of mass graves have been discovered over the
past two year.
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