The hell of Somali girls in migrant camps in Libya

cover. Avvenire photo, archive image: some women detained in a prison camp in Tripoli / Robert Y. Pelton /Moas – Robert Y. Pelton /Moas

“It happens in the official detention centre of Shar al-Zawyah, a prison where migrants caught at sea by the so-called Libyan coast guard are taken, pending their transfer to one of the 28 other prison camps that can be traced back to the government in Tripoli. In the past, the girls have been held in clandestine slums. But now that they are in a state facility, they assure that “it is like being prisoners of traffickers”.

(Nello Scavo, Avvenire 22/6/2021)

“There are five of them left. All minors. All Somalis. Their age is known to the Libyan police. But it is certainly not their being little more than children that protects them from the rapes of the guards who are fed, equipped and trained by Italy and the EU. Even if yesterday Brussels shifted the responsibility onto Rome.
A month ago, two young girls, after the umpteenth session of abuse at the hands of agents, tried to take their own lives. Both were hospitalised in Tripoli and visited by Médecins Sans Frontières staff, who demanded their immediate release. But there was nothing they could do. They were thrown back into the cell. To continue as before”.

“There is a lack of safe conditions for our staff. Repeated episodes of violence against migrants and refugees. Mothers do not even have milk for their newborns” (Nello Scavo, Avvenire 23/6/2021).

The Libyan detention centres, where thousands of migrants intercepted at sea by the country’s Coast Guard are currently held, are infamous.
Despite constant appeals by international organisations about the inhumane conditions applied there, from human trafficking to the physical violence constantly exercised on the women and men held there, these facilities not only continue to exist but are legally supported by the financial complicity of European countries, including Italy.