Libyan security forces break up protest sit-in by migrants

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Libyan information forces raided and violently broke up a protestation sit-in by migrants extracurricular a shuttered U.N. assemblage halfway successful the superior of Tripoli, activists and migrants said Monday.

The troops came overnight, smashed up the protestation site, arresting hundreds, said activistic Tarik Lamloum. Those detained were sent to a detention halfway successful the adjacent municipality of Ain Zara. Others managed to fly from the raid, helium said.

Lamloum, who works with the section Belaady Organization for Human Rights, said astatine slightest 1 migrant assemblage person was changeable during the raid.

The migrants, including women and children, had camped extracurricular the halfway successful Tripoli since October, seeking extortion pursuing a monolithic crackdown connected migrants, and demanding amended attraction astatine the hands of Libyan authorities.

Aiysha, a Sudanese migrant, was portion of the sit-in protestation on with her household since October. The parent of 2 said constabulary bushed and detained migrants. She was among those detained.

“We were caught disconnected guard,” she said, speaking implicit the telephone from the detention halfway successful Ain Zara. She gave lone her archetypal name, fearing for her safety. “They burned the tents, burned everything.”

A authorities spokesperson did not reply telephone calls and messages seeking comment.

In the October crackdown, Libyan authorities rounded up much than 5,000 migrants, including hundreds of children and women — dozens of them pregnant, according to the United Nations. Authorities astatine the clip described it arsenic a information cognition against amerciable migration and cause trafficking. The detained migrants were taken to overcrowded detention centers, prompting an outcry from the U.N. and quality rights groups.

Oil-rich Libya has been engulfed successful chaos since a NATO-backed uprising toppled and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi successful 2011. The North African state has successful caller years emerged arsenic the ascendant transit constituent for migrants fleeing warfare and poorness successful Africa and the Middle East, hoping for a amended beingness successful Europe.

Traffickers person exploited the chaos and often battalion hopeless families into ill-equipped rubber oregon woody boats that stall and laminitis on the perilous Central Mediterranean route. Thousands person drowned on the way, others person been intercepted and returned to Libya.

Those detained connected onshore and others returned to enactment are often taken to government-run detention centers, rife with torture, intersexual battle and different abuses. U.N.-commissioned investigators said successful October that maltreatment and sick attraction of migrants astatine sea, successful detention centers and astatine the hands of traffickers successful Libya magnitude to crimes against humanity.