Italian Interior minister Matteo Salvini has praised the conditions of migrant detention centers in Libya after his visit to the country. In response, UNHCR said that the facilities visited by the minister were an isolated case and that migrants continue to be systematically locked in centers suffering inhuman conditions, torture and abuse.
Migrant centers in Libya are not lagers where torture is widespread and human rights violated, Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini said after a trip to Tripoli on Monday. He added that they have clinics, sports centers and psychological centers, with UNHCR present.
UNHCR replied by saying that the center visited by the minister was an isolated case in a country where migrants are locked in detention centers with conditions called ''shocking'' by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.
UNHCR calls good center 'drop in the ocean'
''The center that Salvini was taken to by Libyan authorities,'' ANSA was told by UNHCR spokesperson Carlotta Sami. ''It exists in part thanks to the European countries supporting it, but it is a drop in an ocean of desperation, transit and departure facilities for vulnerable people (unaccompanied minors, the sick, the elderly, and women at risk that will be opened soon and reserved only for people that we have freed from the (country's) detention centers. And we will not be taking them home. We will transfer them to safe countries through humanitarian corridors.''
Near the new 'Gathering and Departure Facility' of the capital there is also a detention center that the minister was not taken to. The centers are actually jails for migrants in Libya, Sami said, noting that in the country formerly under despot Muammar Gaddafi, ''illegal immigration was a crime punished with unlimited jail time and forced labor''.
Conditions in Libya 'of concern'
The UN is aware of 34 official detention centers, but there are many that open and close. Another problem, the spokesperson noted, ''is that Libya grants asylum only to seven nationalities, while all the others remain in detention''. The conditions of these centers, she underscored, ''continues to be very much of concern. We are always asking for the release of people that Libyans allow us to put on the list of refugees.''
In these centers, the UNHCR team enters - after being authorized by the Libyan authorities - to give assistance to and identify the most vulnerable people to evacuate. Sami said that in 2017 ''we managed to take 1,428 people away, and in the first half of 2018 we are now at 1,396.'' The idea of setting up camps south of Libya, the UNHCR spokesperson said, ''is not a solution. Countries like Niger or Chad cannot become containers where refugees are kept in limbo indefinitely. They must have access to asylum.''