MSF Urges E.U. to Stop Blocking Eritreans From Reaching Europe
The E.U. is trying to stop Eritreans fleeing the country’s repressive dictatorship from reaching Europe even though they have few options other than to make the dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossing, says Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
The medical charity interviewed over a hundred Eritreans who survived the journey. Every one had been a victim of, or witness to, severe violence, including torture, and over half saw people die along the way. Every woman interviewed by MSF had survived or witnessed sexual violence, including rape.
MSF said Eritreans were forced to take such harrowing risks on the journey to Europe because of the risk of being detained in Sudan or confined in refugee camps without end in Ethiopia.
“Ninety percent of Eritreans who manage to reach Europe over land and sea are granted asylum. European governments recognize their claims as genuine but, despite this, are doing all they can to prevent them and other people seeking asylum from reaching E.U. shores,” said MSF general director Arjan Hehenkamp.
MSF said the E.U. is “increasingly collaborating with Eritrea, Libya, Sudan and Ethiopia to prevent Eritreans from leaving Eritrea and transiting through these countries to reach Europe.”
Germany, Austria Disagree Over North Africa Migrant Camps
The German and Austrian foreign ministers reiterated their disagreement over establishing mass holding camps for migrants in North Africa.
Austria’s Sebastian Kurz has championed the plan to replicate the E.U.-Turkey deal on the busier and deadlier route from North Africa to Italy. He is pushing to set up camps where Europe can examine asylum claims without admitting migrants onto their soil.
At a joint press conference in Vienna, German minister of foreign affairs Sigmar Gabriel dismissed the plan as unrealistic. “We have a state in Turkey, whatever one’s opinion about it is,” he told reporters. “Not so in Libya.”
He also noted that mass detention of migrants could be destabilizing in neighboring Tunisia.
UNICEF: Child Migrants Kept in ‘Living Hellholes’ in Libya
The United Nations Children’s Fund said thousands of women and children are held in Libyan detention centers that are like “living hellholes” while they wait to cross the Mediterranean Sea.
UNICEF interviewed over a hundred women and children who had made the journey and found that nearly half had been raped or abused.
They are locked in detention centers – some of them functioning as forced labor camps – run by various Libyan militias, where they are beaten and starved, many for several months, UNICEF said.
The U.N. agency said at least 700 children were among the 4,500 people who drowned crossing the Mediterranean last year, while around 26,000 survived the journey.
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