The MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres, MSF) has lamented appalling conditions and arbitrary internment in a refugee camp in western Libya. Today, she demanded that people taken in the Mediterranean no longer be returned to North African civil war. Libya is one of the main transit countries for refugees who want to travel to Europe by sea.
The rooms in the camp of the internationally recognized government in the city of Sintan are not ventilated, showers and toilets in a miserable condition, said Christoph Hey, MSF project coordinator in the west of Libya, in Berlin. The water supply only partially works.
No lawsuits
All in all about 600 refugees in the camp, almost exclusively men, were arbitrarily detained because they have no residence papers. There is neither indictment nor legal proceedings nor the prospect of release. Libya considers people without valid residence papers to be illegally immigrants.
MSF claims to have started providing medical care in Sintan in June. In the months before, 22 people had died, most of them probably due to tuberculosis. About 70 people still suffered from the infectious disease. The narrowness and the bad conditions made people vulnerable.
Criticism also from UN
For example, one room accommodates 45 Somalis on 70 square meters. „You do not see daylight all week and have no fresh air,“ says Hey. „The only toilet and the only shower in this room are broken by the overuse half the time.“ There is high humidity. „For me, this room is the symbol of the internment in Libya.“
In Libya, since the fall of long-time ruler Muammar al-Gaddafi in 2011, chaotic civil war conditions prevail. Two governments compete for power. The influential General Chalifa Haftar had launched an offensive in April on the capital, Tripoli, where the internationally recognized government is based. This works together with numerous militias.
Libya’s Coast Guard regularly intercepts people in the Mediterranean who want to go to Europe. Again and again there are reports of catastrophic conditions in Libyan internment camps. The UN had also complained in June of the miserable conditions in the camp in Sintan.
