Anti-Migrant Rhetoric in Libya Fuels Abuses, HRW Says
Human Rights Watch has urged Libyan authorities to end arbitrary arrests and unlawful collective expulsions. According to the rights group, protests erupted on June 4 calling for the expulsion of migrants and refugees, following months of incendiary anti-migrant rhetoric from authorities in both eastern and western Libya.
“Rival Libyan authorities have united in fueling xenophobic protests and subjecting migrants to mass arrests, arbitrary detention in inhumane conditions, and collective expulsions,” said Hanan Salah, HRW’s associate Middle East and North Africa director.
Warning that thousands of people remain detained and at imminent risk of deportation, Salah said “… the scale of the abuses, and the urgency of stopping them, could not be clearer”.
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The United Nations has said that migrants and asylum seekers in Libya have been facing increasingly heavy-handed treatment from targeted security operations, that have resulted in at least one death and a steep increase in detentions.
An alert issued by the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), has warned of “a myriad of daily violations and abuses at the hands of both State and Non-State players, that includes expulsions of individuals to countries in
UN human rights report urges end to ‘unimaginable abuse’ of migrants in Libya (file photo).
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