International Migrants Day comes and goes unnoticed like a blue moon. One just did on Dec 18, with the theme: "Harnessing the potential of human mobility".
But for the migrants who are trapped in Libya, it is "harnessing" of another kind. Like draught animals, they are "fastened" by "straps" to this or that slave master. Many are trafficked multiple times.
The irony is this: the migrants went in search of freedom in Europe, but they were driven from there to surrender it in Libya instead. The Economist calls it a European Union-funded horror story playing out in a country where the government is as old as Muammar Gaddafi ouster. Militias divide up the country like the Mafias do in Italy.
The British newspaper detects a despicable European logic at work here. If the migrants reach Europe they may get some semblance of legal protection and their plight may be press material for all to read. Knowing that such niceties don't work in Libya, the EU decides to push its border some hundreds of kilometres south into Libya. Libya is Europe and not Europe.
According to The Economist, since at least 2017 the EU, led by Italy, has trained and equipped the Libyan coastguard to serve as a proxy European marine force. Sadly, the Libyan coastguard isn't what it makes itself out to be. It is a militia by another name. The EU knows this and yet it is keeping Libya flush with European cash.
On May 26 last year, Reuters quoted the United Nations as highlighting this to the EU. In a 37-page report titled "Lethal Disregard", the UN said the lack of migrant protection "is not a tragic anomaly, but rather a consequence of concrete policy decisions and practices by the Libyan authorities, European Union member states and institutions, and other actors".
A Dec 31 report by AP even names the UN of being complicit. The plot thickens.
The EU may be pleased with what it is doing to the migrants. Or more accurately, what it is getting the Libyan militias to do on its behalf. At a cost of close to €400 million in December 2019, in the estimate of AP. The migrants tell a different story, a horror story. Torture, rape, prostitution, extortion and human trafficking are common complaints.
Reports by pressure groups like Amnesty International (AI) are sentence after sentence of migrant fear, fright and pain. In December 2017, AI exposed Libya's dark web of collusion detailing how European governments actively supported "a sophisticated system of abuse and exploitation of refugees and migrants by the Libyan coastguard, detention authorities and smugglers in order to prevent people from crossing the Mediterranean." AI is right.
"The European governments have not just been fully aware of these abuses; by actively supporting the Libyan authorities in stopping sea crossings and containing people in Libya, they are complicit in these abuses."
The EU may dismiss this as an old story being retold. Not so fast, we say. The Economist's report on Tuesday makes the migrant misery as current as it can be. Not much has changed since the UN called for reform in EU migrant policy in its report, "Lethal Disregard". The disregard remains as lethal as ever.
The EU must be told that choosing to see no evil is itself an evil. And to pay for it to be done in Libya is worse.