Mamoudou and Abdullah, two African migrants rescued during an operation by the Libyan Coast Guard, tell of abuse and torture in Libya. The video was released by the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR.
Kidnapped, tortured, threatened and forced to pay for their own lives and to take a boat to cross the Mediterranean, risking death. Tales of abuse suffered in Libya are told by the migrants themselves in a UNHCR video made during an Italian Coast Guard operation, in which 99 people were rescued.
''I cannot advise anybody'' to enter Libya
The video shows parts of a rescue operation in the Mediterranean about 80 kilometers from the Libyan coast. The group of migrants was left drifting at sea for two days without food or water. ''I cannot advise anybody'' to enter Libya, Mamoudou says in the video. ''You will die for nothing.''
Mamoudou left Guniea and told UNHCR that he had been kidnapped, starved and beaten for three weeks and that people are bought and sold for 300 dollars in Libya. He decided to leave by sea because ''if you stay there, every day they are coming to do bad things to you. One day, one day, one day they will kill you".
Lucia Guidolin, a volunteer doctor with the Coast Guard, says that most of the migrants had suffered physical and psychological abuse in Libya. Trauma, "lesions from tortures, and sometimes it seems they really use knives to torture them'', she says in the video."They are made on purpose".
"Life in Libya is truly a hell"
Ivory Coast native Abdullah was also on the Coast Guard ship Dattilo. He told Lucia that he had been kidnapped and tortured by a street gang for months. "They threatened us so we would give them money. If not, they would kill us,'' he said. They shot a pistol near his ear and he continues not to be able to hear well.
''Life in Libya is truly a hell,'' he said, noting that he still suffers nightmares about what happened to him there. ''I don't know how people can go on living after having gone through something like this.'' The UNHCR says that "almost 100,000 refugees and migrants have crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Italy since the beginning of the year".
In Libya, it is estimated that ''over 1.3 million people are in dire need of humanitarian assistance in Libya.'' The UNHCR is thus ''calling for an end to detention for migrants, refugees and other vulnerable people there, and unrestricted humanitarian access inside the country to ensure that international protection is given to them".