Tripoli: More than 600 migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, peacefully demonstrating for relocation, protection, and evacuation from Libya were arrested and moved to Ain Zara detention center in the southern part of Tripoli, where hundreds of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers are already detained in overcrowded cells and deprived living conditions.
The protesters – who were asking for protection, and evacuation from Libya – had been camped out since last October, when Libyan security forces violently rounded up more than 5,000 asylum seekers and migrants, forcing them into notoriously grim detention centres.
Before the raid on 10 January, UNHCR permanently closed the centre in Tripoli because of the ongoing protest. The Norwegian Refugee Council said the most recent arrests were the “culmination of a disastrous situation”, and Médecins Sans Frontières called on the EU to “stop supporting the perpetration of an unending system of detention, abuse, and violence in Libya”.
The EU backs the Libyan Coast Guard, which intercepted more than 32,000 asylum seekers and migrants at sea last year, returning them to detention centres. Libya was supposed to hold parliamentary elections last month, but the polls were postponed and no new date has been set. Web Desk
