Libya
114 Bangladeshis return from Libya
As many as 114 Bangladeshi nationals returned home from Libya Thursday, thanks to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
A special flight of Buraq Air carrying the returnees arrived at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport at 8.15am, said Zia, additional superintendent (media) of the Airport Armed Police Battalion (APBn).
Read:Bangladesh 6th largest migrant sending country: IOM
Every returnee was provided food and a financial assistance of Tk 4,750 by IOM.
These Bangladeshis went to Dubai, Oman and Malaysia on ‘visit visas’ from Bangladesh last year. From there, they went to Libya by paying brokers up to Tk 11-15 lakh each.
But they were detained by Libyan law enforcers in Tripoli. And some of them even served up to nine months in jail. Later, the United Nations migration agency facilitated their return to Bangladesh.
IOM’s Voluntary Humanitarian Return Programme can be life-saving for migrants stranded or in detention, especially in conflict-ridden countries.
Since 2015, a total of 2,942 Bangladeshi migrants have returned from Libya through the programme, which is a part of the larger EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration.
Read:IOM seeks focus on perilous journeys by Bangladeshis to migrate
The programme facilitates orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration management through the development of rights-based and development-focused policies and processes on protection and sustainable reintegration.
The necessity of the programme was magnified in 2020, when 30 migrants—including 26 Bangladeshis — were shot and killed at a smuggling warehouse in the Libyan town of Mizdah.
Ransomed and beaten: Migrants face abuse in Libyan detention
Osman Touré was crying from the pain of repeated beatings and torture as he dialed his brother’s cellphone number.
“I’m in prison in Libya,” Touré said in that August 2017 call. “They will kill me if you don’t pay 2,500 dinars in 24 hours.”
Within days, Touré’s family transferred the roughly $550 demanded to secure his freedom from a government detention center in Libya. But Touré was not let go — instead, he was sold to a trafficker and kept enslaved for four more years.
Touré is among tens of thousands of migrants who have endured torture, sexual violence and extortion at the hands of guards in detention centers in Libya, a major hub for migrants fleeing poverty and wars in Africa and the Middle East, hoping for a better life in Europe.
The 25-year-old Guinean, along with two dozen other migrants, spoke to The Associated Press aboard the Geo Barents, a rescue vessel operated by the medical aid group Doctors without Borders in the Mediterranean off Libya. Most had been held in trafficking warehouses and government detention centers in western Libya over the past four years.
Read: Libya’s migrant roundup reaches 4,000 amid major crackdown
They were among 60 migrants who fled Libya on Sept. 19 in two unseaworthy boats and were rescued a day later by the Geo Barents. The AP also obtained testimonies from many others collected in recent months by the aid group, known by its French acronym MSF.
The European Union has sent 455 million euros to Libya since 2015, largely channeled through U.N. agencies and aimed at beefing up Libya’s coast guard, reinforcing its southern border and improving conditions for migrants.
However, huge sums have been diverted to networks of militiamen and traffickers who exploit migrants, according to a 2019 AP investigation. Coast guard members are also complicit, turning migrants intercepted at sea over to detention centers under deals with militias or demanding payoffs to let others go.
The practice continues unabated and U.N.-commissioned investigators said in a 32-page report last week that “policies meant to push migrants back to Libya to keep them away from European shores ultimately lead to abuses,” including possible crimes against humanity.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants hoping to reach Europe have made their way through Libya, where a lucrative trafficking business has flourished in a country without a functioning government, split for years between rival administrations in the east and west, each backed by armed groups and foreign governments.
The migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, told the AP that detention center guards beat and tortured them, then extorted money from their relatives, supposedly in exchange for their freedom. Their bodies showed traces of old and recent injuries, and signs of bullet and knife wounds on their backs, legs, arms and faces.
On paper, the detention centers are run by the Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration, which is overseen by the Interior Ministry and Libya's interim authorities, who took power earlier this year under U.N. auspices to carry out national elections by the end of the year. But on the ground, notorious militias remain in control, according to migrants and the U.N. investigators.
“Migrants are detained for indefinite periods without an opportunity to have the legality of their detention reviewed, and the only practical means of escape is by paying large sums of money to the guards or engaging in forced labor or sexual favors inside or outside the detention," the U.N. report said.
Spokespeople for Libya’s government, the Interior Ministry, the directorate and the coast guard did not answer phone calls or respond to messages seeking comment.
Touré, the youngest of seven siblings abandoned by their father, said that as an adolescent he watched others from his small Guinean town of Kindia make it to Europe and help pull their families out of poverty.
He began his own attempt in March 2015, taking odd jobs along the way to finance the trip. Traffickers held him captive for months twice, in Niger and Algeria, before he crossed into Libya in April 2017, he said.
Four months later, Touré embarked from Libya, only to be intercepted by the coast guard and returned to Tripoli. At the port, he and other migrants attempted to flee but were caught by security forces and taken to the al-Nasr Martyrs detention center in Zawiya.
That’s when the torture started. He described how guards would hang them upside down and whip their bare feet. At times other migrants were forced or given incentives to take part in the violence.
“A migrant from Ghana refused to beat us, but there was a Cameroonian who was really cruel,” Touré said.
His second week in prison, six guards approached him. One slapped him hard on the right side of his face. The rest kicked and beat him. Then he was handed a cellphone and ordered to call his family.
Ten others in the cell were forced to do the same. Three were taken out by the guards in the next few days. He doesn't know what became of them, he said.
Read: Italian vessel rescues 65 from migrant boat fleeing Libya
The money sent by captives' relatives was usually transferred via Western Union or an informal system of personal accounts to a trafficker in coordination with the guards. In some cases, like Touré’s, families sent money to the detained migrant and guards took them to withdraw it.
Touré was taken from his cell three days after the phone call. He thought he would walk free. Instead, the guards sold him to a trafficker in Zawiya. He spent the next four years enslaved, working in the trafficker’s warehouse.
Finally his luck changed in September when the trafficker's wife took pity on him and persuaded her husband to set him free, he said. Within days he was on a small inflatable boat with 55 others attempting the Mediterranean crossing.
Overladen, the boat did not make it far. Those onboard were rescued by the Geo Barents 48 nautical miles off Libya’s coast. They were taken to Sicily, where Italian authorities permitted the rescue ship to dock on Sept. 27 and let the migrants apply for asylum. They could still be returned to their home countries if their requests are denied.
Touré and other migrants said that besides plain cruelty, there was racism behind their abuse in Libya. The U.N. report found the same — that Black sub-Saharan Africans were likely to be subjected to harsher treatment than others.
“Libya isn’t a safe place for Black Africans,” Touré said.
The point of arrival at one of Libya’s ports was the first opportunity for Libya’s security forces to extract payment from migrants trying to reach Europe.
For some, particularly Arab migrants, the ordeal ended there without detention, as long as they paid. Waleed, a Tunisian, told the AP he bribed guards four times at the Tripoli port and walked free. Three other times he was taken to detention centers, where he found a way to get enough money to the guards and was released.
Mohammed, a Moroccan, also said he was released at port in 2020 by handing over 3,000 dinars ($660). Both men gave only their first names out of fear for the safety of family members still inside Libya.
The Libyan coast guard, which is trained and equipped by the European Union, has intercepted some 87,000 migrants in the Mediterranean Sea since 2016, including about 26,300 so far this year, according to U.N. figures. But only about 10,000 are in detention centers, according to the U.N. migration agency, raising concerns that many are in the hands of criminal groups and traffickers, and others are dead.
Not all have enough money to pay bribes. Mohammed Salah, a 20-year-old migrant from the Ivory Coast, told the AP he was intercepted and returned to Libya in January 2020. He didn’t have the 3,000 dinars ($660) demanded for his freedom.
After he argued over the bribe, he was beaten at the police station and suffered a broken leg. Detention center guards then handed him over to a trafficker, who enslaved him for over a year, he said.
Valentin Najang of Cameroon was detained in the Zawiya detention center after being captured early last month. The guards repeatedly beat him and other migrants with sticks and plastic tubing, the 18-year-old told the AP. Once, he watched two guards beat a young migrant from Mauritius unconscious. A week into his detention, his family paid 500,000 Cameroonian francs (over $880) for his freedom.
At the heart of the abuses against migrants remains the question of who can be held accountable. The U.N. report did not name suspects, saying more investigation is needed to determine who was culpable.
Read: Many migrants staying in US even as expulsion flights rise
But migrants and others inside Libya say the issue is clear cut: It’s the militias and warlords who have become powerful government figures in many areas.
The coastal town of Zawiya, where the al-Nasr Martyrs detention center is located, is controlled by the Nasr Martyrs militia, which have “the final word on all the town’s security and military matters,” said a former senior official at the Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
The militia is led by Mohammed Kachlaf, who was sanctioned in 2018 by the U.N. Security Council, which called his network “one of the most dominant in the field of migrant smuggling and the exploitation of migrants in Libya.”
Zawiya’s coast guard unit is commanded by Abdel-Rahman Milad, who was also sanctioned in 2018 by the U.N. Security Council for human trafficking. U.N. experts said Milad and other coast guard members “are directly involved in the sinking of migrant boats using firearms.” Milad has denied any links to human smuggling.
And Tripoli’s Abu Salim neighborhood, where a detention center with the same name is located, is controlled by a militia led by Abdel-Ghani al-Kikli. Though Amnesty International has accused him of war crimes and other serious rights violations, he was named this year as the head of the government's so-called Stability Support Authority with even broader arrest powers.
“It is a well-connected mafia with influence in each corner of the government,” the former Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration official said.
Libya’s migrant roundup reaches 4,000 amid major crackdown
A major crackdown in western Libya has resulted in the detention of at least 4,000 migrants, including hundreds of women and children, officials said Saturday. The U.N. said at least one young migrant was shot dead and 15 others injured, including two in serious conditions, in the crackdown.
The raids took place Friday in the western town of Gargaresh as part of what authorities described as a security campaign against illegal migration and drug trafficking. The Interior Ministry, which led the crackdown, made no mention of any traffickers or smugglers being arrested.
Officials said Friday that 500 illegal migrants had been detained but on Saturday reported that number had reached 4,000.
Gargaresh, a known hub for migrants and refugees, is about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) west of Tripoli, the Libyan capital. The town has seen several waves of raids on migrants over the years, but the latest one was described by activists as the fiercest so far.
Read: Italian vessel rescues 65 from migrant boat fleeing Libya
Since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that ousted and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi, Libya has emerged as the dominant transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East, hoping for a better life in Europe. Human traffickers have benefited from the chaos in the oil-rich nation and smuggled migrants through the country’s lengthy border with six nations. They then pack desperate migrants into ill-equipped rubber boats in risky voyages through the perilous Central Mediterranean Sea route.
The detained were gathered in a facility in Tripoli called the Collection and Return Center, said police Col. Nouri al-Grettli, head of the center.
He said the migrants have been distributed to detention centers in Tripoli and surrounding towns. Libya’s detention facilities are miserable, overcrowded places where migrants have suffered from abuses and severe ill-treatment, according to rights activists.
A government official said authorities would “deport as many as possible” of the migrants to their home countries. He said many of the detained had lived illegally in Libya for years. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.
Read: Many migrants staying in US even as expulsion flights rise
Tarik Lamloum, a Libyan activist working with the Belaady Organization for Human Rights, said the raids involved human rights violations against the migrants, especially in the way some women and children were detained.
Lamloum said many detained migrants have been registered with the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, as refugees or asylum-seekers.
Vincent Cochetel, the agency’s special envoy for the Central Mediterranean, told The Associated Press that initial reports were that at least one person was killed and 15 injured in the crackdown. He said in some cases security personnel used excessive force and drove people out of their homes.
“We should not be surprised if people are scared and will try to leave by sea,” he said.
Georgette Gagnon, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for Libya, said unarmed migrants were harassed in their homes, beaten and shot in the crackdown which has also seen a communication blackout in Gargaresh.
Among the injured were five by gunshots with two of them being treated in an intensive care unit, she said in a statement late Saturday.
Read:Options shrink for Haitian migrants straddling Texas border
The statement didn’t elaborate further details.
The crackdown comes amid a spike in crossings and attempted crossings of the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. Libya’s coast guard has intercepted around 25,300 migrants and returned them to Libya’s shores so far this year. Over 1,100 migrants were reported dead or presumed dead off Libya in the first nine months of 2021, but that number is believed to be higher, according to the U.N. migration agency.
Hundreds of migrants were seen in images posted on social media Friday by the Interior Ministry sitting clustered together in a yard with the banner of the Collection and Return Center in the background.
Other images from Gargaresh purporting to show migrants show them with their hands tied behind their backs. An aerial photo showed men lying face down on the ground at a crossroads, with military trucks and guards around them.
From 9/11′s ashes, a new world took shape. It did not last.
In the ghastly rubble of ground zero’s fallen towers 20 years ago, Hour Zero arrived, a chance to start anew.
World affairs reordered abruptly on that morning of blue skies, black ash, fire and death.
In Iran, chants of “death to America” quickly gave way to candlelight vigils to mourn the American dead. Vladimir Putin weighed in with substantive help as the U.S. prepared to go to war in Russia’s region of influence.
Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, a murderous dictator with a poetic streak, spoke of the “human duty” to be with Americans after “these horrifying and awesome events, which are bound to awaken human conscience.”
From the first terrible moments, America’s longstanding allies were joined by longtime enemies in that singularly galvanizing instant. No nation with global standing was cheering the stateless terrorists vowing to conquer capitalism and democracy. How rare is that?
Too rare to last, it turned out.
Read: 9/11 artifacts share ‘pieces of truth’ in victims’ stories
Civilizations have their allegories for rebirth in times of devastation. A global favorite is that of the phoenix, a magical and magnificent bird, rising from ashes. In the hellscape of Germany at the end of World War II, it was the concept of Hour Zero, or Stunde Null, that offered the opportunity to start anew.
For the U.S., the zero hour of Sept. 11, 2001, meant a chance to reshape its place in the post-Cold War world from a high perch of influence and goodwill as it entered the new millennium. This was only a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union left America with both the moral authority and the financial and military muscle to be unquestionably the lone superpower.
Those advantages were soon squandered. Instead of a new order, 9/11 fueled 20 years of war abroad. In the U.S., it gave rise to the angry, aggrieved, self-proclaimed patriot, and heightened surveillance and suspicion in the name of common defense.
It opened an era of deference to the armed forces as lawmakers pulled back on oversight and let presidents give primacy to the military over law enforcement in the fight against terrorism. And it sparked anti-immigrant sentiment, primarily directed at Muslim countries, that lingers today.
A war of necessity — in the eyes of most of the world — in Afghanistan was followed two years later by a war of choice as the U.S. invaded Iraq on false claims that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction. President George W. Bush labeled Iran, Iraq and North Korea an “axis of evil.”
Thus opened the deep, deadly mineshaft of “forever wars.” There were convulsions throughout the Middle East, and U.S. foreign policy — for half a century a force for ballast — instead gave way to a head-snapping change in approaches in foreign policy from Bush to Obama to Trump. With that came waning trust in America’s leadership and reliability.
Other parts of the world were not immune. Far-right populist movements coursed through Europe. Britain voted to break away from the European Union. And China steadily ascended in the global pecking order.
President Joe Biden is trying to restore trust in the belief of a steady hand from the U.S. but there is no easy path. He is ending war, but what comes next?
In Afghanistan in August, the Taliban seized control with menacing swiftness as the Afghan government and security forces that the United States and its allies had spent two decades trying to build collapsed. No steady hand was evident from the U.S. in the harried, disorganized evacuation of Afghans desperately trying to flee the country in the first weeks of the Taliban’s re-established rule.
Allies whose troops had fought and died in the U.S-led war in Afghanistan expressed dismay at Biden’s management of the U.S. withdrawal, under a deal President Donald Trump had struck with the Taliban.
THE ‘HOMELAND’
In the United States, the Sept. 11 attacks set loose a torrent of rage.
In shock from the assault, a swath of American society embraced the us vs. them binary outlook articulated by Bush — “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” — and has never let go of it.
You could hear it in the country songs and talk radio, and during presidential campaigns, offering the balm of a bloodlust cry for revenge. “We’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the American way,” Toby Keith promised America’s enemies in one of the most popular of those songs in 2002.
Americans stuck flags in yards and on the back of trucks. Factionalism hardened inside America, in school board fights, on Facebook posts, and in national politics, so that opposing views were treated as propaganda from mortal enemies. The concept of enemy also evolved, from not simply the terrorist but also to the immigrant, or the conflation of the terrorist as immigrant trying to cross the border.
The patriot under threat became a personal and political identity in the United States. Fifteen years later, Trump harnessed it to help him win the presidency.
THE OTHERING
In the week after the attacks, Bush demanded of Americans that they know “Islam is peace” and that the attacks were a perversion of that religion. He told the country that American Muslims are us, not them, even as mosques came under surveillance and Arabs coming to the U.S. to take their kids to Disneyland or go to school risked being detained for questioning.
For Trump, in contrast, everything was always about them, the outsiders.
In the birther lie Trump promoted before his presidency, Barack Obama was an outsider. In Trump’s campaigns and administration, Muslims and immigrants were outsiders. The “China virus” was a foreign interloper, too.
Overseas, deadly attacks by Islamic extremists, like the 2004 bombing of Madrid trains that killed nearly 200 people and the 2005 attack on London’s transportation system that killed more than 50, hardened attitudes in Europe as well.
By 2015, as the Islamic State group captured wide areas of Iraq and pushed deep into Syria, the number of refugees increased dramatically, with more than 1 million migrants, primarily from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, entering Europe that year alone.
The year was bracketed by attacks in France on the Charlie Hebdo magazine staff in January after it published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and on the Bataclan theater and other Paris locations in November, reinforcing the angst then gripping the continent.
Already growing in support, far-right parties were able to capitalize on the fears to establish themselves as part of the European mainstream. They remain represented in many European parliaments, even as the flow of immigrants has slowed dramatically and most concerns have proved unfounded.
Read: From election to COVID, 9/11 conspiracies cast a long shadow
49 Bangladeshi migrants rescued from Mediterranean
Tunisia navy has rescued 49 undocumented Bangladeshi migrants from the Mediterranean Sea.
The Bangladesh nationals boarded the oil platform "Didon" Thursday after their boat broke down 80km off the coastal town of Zarzis, close to the Libyan border, according to Tunis Afrique Presse.
The migrants, aged between 16 and 50, were heading towards Europe and had set sail from the Libyan coast on July 5, the Tunisian defence ministry said.
Also read: Bangladeshi migrants among 43 missing as boat sinks off Tunisia
"The Bangladesh nationals were transferred to the El Ktef seaport in Ben Guerdane city where they will be handed over to National Guard," it added.
Several migrant boats sank recently while trying to reach Europe as more people are now trying to make the dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean Sea to the continent amid warmer summer weather.
Also read: 20 migrants dead off Tunisia after boat sinks, more missing
Between June 26 and July 3, Tunisian naval authorities fished out 49 bodies of migrants and saved 78 after four boats sank off the coast of Sfax city.
On July 3, at least 43 migrants, including Bangladeshis, went missing while 84 were rescued after a boat heading towards Europe drowned off the coast of Tunisia.
Major General Shamim new Ambassador to Libya
The government has appointed Major General S M Shamim-Uz-Zaman as the new Ambassador of Bangladesh to Libya.
Major General S M Shamim-Uz-Zaman was commissioned in Bangladesh Army on 21 December 1984.
Also read: Fazlul Bari new Bangladesh ambassador to Iraq
Since commissioning, he has been serving in various staff, instructional and command appointments at different levels.
Major General Shamim has served as Military Secretary to the President of Bangladesh, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Also read: Sarwar Mahmood new Bangladesh ambassador to Spain
He has attained Masters in Defence Studies from National University and Masters in Military Science from Madras University, India.
160 Bangladeshi migrants return from Libya with IOM support
International Organization for Migration (IOM) facilitated the safe return of 160 Bangladeshi migrants stranded in Libya under its Voluntary Humanitarian Return (VHR) programme on Wednesday.
The flight carrying the returnees left Benghazi, Libya on Tuesday and landed at Dhaka’s Hazarat Shajalal International Airport (HSIA) on Wednesday.
Also Read: 28,849 Bangladeshi expats to return home: FM
The returnees including 159 men and one woman were stranded in Libya due to the COVID-19 pandemic and protracted political instability.
IOM assisted with the safe return of these migrants in coordination with the Embassy of Bangladesh in Libya.
The body of one Bangladeshi national who died in Libya was also repatriated on this flight.
Prior to departure, the returnees underwent health checks, were offered pre-departure transportation assistance, counselling services and screened for underlying protection vulnerabilities by IOM.
Given the current COVID- 19 situation, all returnees were also provided with personal protective equipment (PPE) and took a COVID-test (PCR) prior to departure.
In Dhaka, government officials and IOM Bangladesh staff received and supported the migrants at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.
Also Read: Returnee migrants: Almost half still unemployed, 28% in debt
At the airport, the returnees each received cash for transportation from IOM to help them get home.
Besides,, the returnees will each receive a reintegration grant from IOM.
Reintegration support is particularly important for migrants who, in some cases, have experienced physical and psychological trauma while stranded in Libya.
One of the returnees said, “Life in Libya was very dangerous as hostilities continued there. I decided to return to my country as I could not earn enough money. It was very difficult to stay over there. I am grateful to IOM and the Government of Bangladesh for arranging my flight home. I am very happy that I will see my family after years.”
Giorgi Gigauri, IOM Bangladesh’s Chief of Mission said stranded Bangladeshi migrants find themselves in precarious conditions in Libya, and COVID-19 has exacerbated their vulnerabilities.
"It is our number one priority to provide these returnees with a safe and dignified way to get home, and to support reintegration into their communities. To do this, we continue to work closely and constructively with the Government of Bangladesh, and I thank them for their ongoing efforts.”
IOM’s Voluntary Humanitarian Return Programme can be life-saving for migrants stranded or in detention, especially in conflict-ridden countries. Since 2015, a total of 2,942 Bangladeshi migrants have returned from Libya through the Programme, which is a part of the larger EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration.
The programme facilitates orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration management through the development of rights-based and development-focused policies and processes on protection and sustainable reintegration.
The necessity of the VHR programme was magnified in 2020, when 30 migrants—including 26 Bangladeshis—were shot and killed in a smuggling warehouse in the Libyan town of Mizdah.
The flight was made possible with support from the EU Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF) through the EU-IOM Joint Initiative, supported by the European Union.
Migrants evade Libyan coast guard to reach Europe
The February storm is unforgiving, violently shaking the humanitarian rescuers’ vessel as they try to revive a faulty engine and save African migrants drifting in the Mediterranean Sea after fleeing Libya on unseaworthy boats.
Trafficking of 26 Bangladeshis killed in Libya: Bail of 4 accused suspended
The Appellate Division on Sunday cancelled the bail orders of two accused and stayed the bail orders of two others in a case filed over the trafficking of 26 Bangladeshis killed in Libya last year.
74 migrants killed in shipwreck off Libya coast
At least 74 migrants died in a shipwreck on Thursday off the coast of Khums, Libya, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said.