• Doctors Without Borders denounces rapes and torture committed against migrants in Libya
  • Migrants, MSF saves another 127 people: they arrive in Lampedusa on the Coast Guard ships
  • MSF temporarily suspends activities before Libya

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07 September 2017In the 'official' fields of detention of migrants in Libya, in which the people intercepted by the Libyan Coast Guard, financed and trained by the EU, are being raped and torture occurs. This was reported by Joanne Liu, international president of Doctors Without Borders, at a press conference in Brussels. In the detention camps, he said, "pregnant women are raped. They are particularly targeted, taken and raped". Liu spoke of "systematic cruelty" and "torture. I know - he added - that there are no magic wands, but at least we have to stop sending people back to that nightmare land that is Libya" today. For Liu, "the European leaders" who "rejoice because fewer people arrive on the Italian coasts" are "accomplices and we want them to respond". The MSF president sent an open letter to European leaders: "I visited a number of official detention centers last week and we know that these official detention centers are just the tip of the iceberg - he writes - people are simply considered raw material to be exploited. They are crammed into dark, filthy rooms, without ventilation, they live on one another ".

The open letter was also sent by Msf to the Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, as well as to all the other leaders of the Member States and to the institutions of the European Union to denounce the atrocious suffering that their migration policies are fueling in Libya. "The drama that migrants and refugees are experiencing in Libya should shock the collective conscience of citizens and leaders of Europe", reads the letter signed also by Loris De Filippi, president of MSF in Italy, as well as by Liu. "Blinded by the goal of keeping people out of Europe, European policies and funding are helping to stop the boats leaving Libya, but in this way they only feed a criminal system of abuses". MSF has been assisting people in Tripoli detention centers for over a year and has seen this pattern of arbitrary detention, extortion, physical abuse and deprivation of basic services that men, women and children suffer in these centers, explains the organization in a statement. '' The detention of migrants and refugees in Libya is shameful. We must have the courage to call it for what it really is: a thriving business that prides itself on kidnapping, torture and extortion '' continues the open letter from Msf. '' People are treated as goods to be exploited. Crowded in dark and grimy rooms, without ventilation, forced to live one above the other. Women are raped and then forced to call their families and ask for money to be released. Their desperation is shocking '', the letter continues.