EU leaders reaffirm Libya migrant policy despite criticism

In Rome, Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano said Italy was pledging 10 million euros to help Libya’s southern neighbours — Niger, Chad and Sudan — better control their borders so migrants can’t reach Libya. Another 18 million euros is slated for the voluntary repatriations of migrants who reach Libya and decide not to continue their journeys north.

“In order to lower the numbers leaving Libya, we have to lower the numbers entering,” Alfano told a press conference.

In Tallinn, the interior ministers called for aid groups conducting rescue operations in the Mediterranean to follow a code of conduct, after prosecutors in Italy have accused some of complicity with Libyan-based smugglers.

The ministers also vowed to crack down on countries that refuse to take their nationals home when their asylum bids fail in Europe, including imposing limits to visa programs.

And they promised to “enhance the capacity of the Libyan coast guard,” to better patrol its coasts and turn back migrant boats, despite renewed criticism from Amnesty International that such a policy is “reckless” given Libya’s lawlessness.

On the eve of the meeting, the human rights group said the turnback policy risked victimizing desperate migrants even more since they risk grave human rights abuses once returned to Libya and trapped there.

More than 2,000 migrants to Europe have died at sea so far this year while over 73,380 have reached Italy. By year’s end, the number of arrivals is expected to match or exceed the 181,400 who made it in 2016, which was more than in the two previous years, the report said.

Amnesty said it was “deeply problematic” to unconditionally fund and train Libya, where human rights are lacking and the coast guard has been known for violence and even smuggling.

The group cited an August incident off Libya’s coast in which attackers shot at a Doctors Without Borders rescue boat. A U.N panel of experts on Libya later confirmed that two officers from a coast guard faction were involved.

In May, the Libyan coast guard intervened in a search-and-rescue operation another non-governmental organization was performing. The coast guard officers threatened migrants with weapons, took command of their wooden boat and took it back to Libya, Amnesty reported.

Amnesty is not alone in its concern.

The search-and-rescue director for Save the Children, Rob MacGillivray, said in a statement that rescued migrants have recounted horrors from Libya, including claims of sexual assaults, sales to others for work and whippings and electrical shocks in detention centres.

“Simply pushing desperate people back to Libya, which many describe as hell, is not a solution,” MacGillivray said.

EU Migration Commissioner Dimitri Avramopoulos conceded at a recent news conference in Paris that the EU is drawing on a country in “very precarious conditions.”

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Elaine Ganley in Paris contributed.

Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

EU leaders reaffirm Libya migrant policy despite criticism

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