June 11, 2025 • 46 mins
James is joined by Mick to talk about the horrific conditions migrants face in Libya and the EU’s funding of detention camps.
Sources:
https://missingmigrants.iom.int/region/mediterranean https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/61570/libyas-coast-guard-has-intercepted-and-returned-nearly-21000-migrants-in-2024
European Commission Financial Transparency System Andrea Beck, 2024
Italian and EU Funding of the Libyan Coast Guard: How Italian External Border Immigration Policies Have Created Crimes Against Humanity, Public Ignorance, and Legal Accountability Issues
Ronald Bruce. Libya: From Colony to Revolution
Ship of Humanity: Witness to Rescue in the Mediterranean by Judith Sunderland
Capitivity, Migration and Power in Libya. Nadia Al-Dayel, Aaron Anfinson & Graeme Anfinson 2021.
Tilley: War Making and State Making as organized crime
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hi everyone, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
It's me James today and I am lucky to be
joined again by Mick. We're going to talk today about Libya,
and just like right off the top, this is going
to be a sad episode. Not much good happens to
migrants in Libya. A lot of bad stuff happens. And
if you someone who prefers not to hear about like
violence or sexual violence or incarceration, it's probably some other
(00:32):
stuff I'm overlooking. This might not be the episode for you,
and that's fine.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
But Mick, how you doing.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Hi James, I'm goods. I'm goods.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
That was an uplifting intro, wasn't it. I felt like
that was a really positive way to start the show.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
Yes, definitely, definitely, but probably very warranted because it's not
going to be a fun episode. Like, there's torture, there's imprisonments,
there's some slave months. It's horrible. Yeah, Libya is probably
one of the worst countries in the world to be
a migrant at the moment, if not the worst.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Yeah, I and you have a whole industry, a whole
part of their economy that is predicated on enslaving migrants.
Lately selling people and all of the other kinds of
violence that come from that.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Exactly.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
There's I think over twenty or thirty different facilities with
varying degrees of government involvement in those facilities, and it's
very hard to pinpoint exactly like where does the government
and where does this human trafficking business begin? Right, It's
similar to like early mid Soviet Union, where there was
(01:44):
so much organized crime happening within the government that it
was also impossible to distinguish, like where one began and
where the other ended.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah, like which was which exactly.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
It was under breast nev I think, but don't don't
quote me on that.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeah, so yeah, so give us a lad only.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Well, first of all, maybe I guess if people have
been not listening, why are we talking about Libya?
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Well, on May eighth, that was reported that the Trump
administration was considering sporting migrants to this North African country,
which is a new low. Yeah, like the bar is
buried and these motherfuckers just grabbed the shovel. I don't
think it's possible to exaggerate just how cruel this would
(02:29):
be if it were to happen. As I said earlier,
Libya is probably the worst country in the world to
be a migrant at the moment. And to illustrate that,
I'm going to briefly quote from this twenty twenty two
and it's the International article Men, women and children returned
to Libya returned in this case meaning that they tried
(02:49):
to cross the Mediterranean and were picked up by the
Libyan coast guards. Returned to Libya face arbitrary detention, torture,
cruel and inhumane detension conditions, rape and sexual violence, extortion,
forced labor, and unlawful killings. Instead of addressing this human
rights crisis, the Libyan Government of National Unity now called
(03:12):
the GMU, continues to facilitate further abuses entrench impunity, as
illustrated by its recent appointment of Mohammed al Koha as
Director of the Department for Combating Illegal Migration, which we
will be referring to as the DCIM from now on.
To make that entire list. Somehow worse, there has been
(03:34):
extensive documentation from human rights groups that strongly suggest that
the DCIM works together with non governmental militias, making the
latter responsible for at least six unofficial detention centers. Although
it is reasonable to assume that there might be more.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
So reporting out of Libya is hard to understate it. Yes,
Sally Hayden has an excellent book called My Fourth Time
We Drowned that Like, one of the things I like
about it is it explains like her journalistic process, and
it's people who are detained in places where they can't
get out clubbing together to get one message out on
(04:14):
the one phone that one person smuggled in in part right,
use someone had the battery, someone had the screen or whatever,
and someone else had a SIM card and like that
way they could they could get a message out. But
it's everything that we hear about. We can assume that
there is probably a lot more of it happening that
we haven't heard about, or at least some more of
(04:34):
it happening that we haven't heard about.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Yeah, the worst part about this is that it's knowing
that it's probably worse and it's probably more extensive than
we know. Because Yeah, as you said, Livia is a
hard country to do this kind of reporting, and I
am assuming that it's not very safe for a journalists
to just go there and go talk to people.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah, Yeah, And like at the end of the day,
you're not just as I'm sure you'll explain, You're not
just fucking with the Libyan government. You're fucking with the
European Union is absolutely complicit in this and like they
ain't coming to save you.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
We'll get to that how work. The EU is complicited
in both funding and in actions. Yeah, so let's first
get this onto the proper context. We're going to dive
for bits into the history of Libya because that plays
a major part in how this situation is right now.
So we'll start by talking about the former dictator Muamar Kadaffi.
(05:35):
He took control of Libya through a military kudetta and
ruled it from nineteen sixty nine up until he faced
mob justice in the Libyan Civil War in twenty eleven.
He is or was accused of human rights violations and
cracking down heart on this scent and opposition. Initially was
on the list of states which sponsored terrorism, but from
(05:57):
two thousand and four onwards he slowly began can to
rekindle ties with a number of countries, with one of
the main champions for rehabilitation being Italy, the former colonial
power that had occupied Libya. To no one's surprised we're
bringing in colonialism here. Now, James, you get three guesses
as to what one of the cooperations was between Libya
(06:19):
and Italy.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Well, I can get many things. Ray, there's some stories
about good Affi and Berlusconi, but we won't talk about this.
Was it preventing migrant crossing the Mediterranean Sea?
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yes, that is true.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Yeah, something the Italians love to do.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
It was happening back then as well. Yeah, it's a
really weird relationship between Italy and Libya. That's also kind
of fascinating. But then we're going to get all the
way off topic if we dive into that.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
So, somewhere between two thousand and four and two thousand
and five, Libya was supplied with money and equipment to
help stem the flow of illegal migration coming from Africa.
Kadaffi himself said in twenty ten that this was to
prevent the loss of European cultural identity to a new
black Europa, after Libya was paid fifty million euro for
(07:13):
this purpose that same year.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Yeah, yeah, based anti colonial Yes, I'm sure that's a
Gadaffi did nothing wrong movement that exists on some corner
of Reddit that I haven't Oh, got that plumitted into yet,
but yeah, this guy was a third.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
I cannot find a stick long enough that I would
touch that community with, to be honest. That's also something
that plays in here, and that I think, like you
read a lot of human rights reports, you come across it.
But there's also like a distinct form of racism for
Sub Saharan or like Eastern African people. Definitely, Yeah, that's
also going to play into this. It's just a smorgas
(07:48):
board of bad stuff.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah, I mean for people who perhaps grew up in
the United States, you know for their were and received
verio education in school about African geography and politics like
this can be hard to grasp, right, Like Africa is
sometimes perceived as a country, not a continent in sort
of discourse in the United States. And that's again like
it's not people's fault, like it's it's in nature of
(08:11):
our education system failing people. But yeah, if you're not familiar,
rarely view it's called in North Africa, and like great
replacement style racist conspiracies absolutely exist in North Africa about
people from Sub Saharan Africa. Either that the parts of
Africa that are beneath the Sahara desert and in the
which you could find by looking at them that. But
(08:33):
yet like just because this is in Africa, like racist
shit is absolutely going down. No.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
I think it was highlighted a bit when the president
or Prime Minister of Tunisia was cracking down on migration
that there was also like a very distinct racism against
against sub Saharan Africans.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, but it is.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
It's a global thing where because racist is a social
construct and it's not like an inherent thing that that
You'll hear this a lot. You know, I've worked in
Hispaniola a lot, Right, the island that contains hating Dominican Republic,
the island which receives millions of dollars from the United
States to reinforce the border between the two nations that
(09:13):
make it up. You will hear this reference to Haitian
people as black from Afro Caribbean Dominican people, right, And
this idea that there's this racial distinction between the two,
that it's a nature of race, right, it's quite social
construct between mobilized to create a power dynamic.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Yeah, that's a whole other topic of discussion, because I
identity and race are so intermingled but also so fluid. Yeah,
you could talk for hours about it, but that's not
why we're here. Yeah, a warming up ties with Libya
was a pragmatic approach from the EU, as it lies
just on the doorstep of Fortress Europe, but also marked
(09:53):
the start of set fortress to start externalizing its borders
into Africa, slowly working towards ki migrants and refugees from
setting food on European soil, which would entitle them to
apply for asylum. So even that step that's encoded in
European law, we're trying to like circumvent by just making
(10:14):
sure that they don't cross the Mediterranean.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Right.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
So sometime later, when the civil war began during the
Art Spring, Yeah, Libyan dissidents got rid of the sex
best that was more mar Kadaffi. So the world became
a slightly better place after that. Currently, there are two
major factions fighting over power in Libya, although there are
numerous other groups involved. To dive into this would probably
(10:37):
take up most of the episodes, so I will leave
that aside. Yeah, the first of the major factions is
the GNU, the Government of National Unity, led by Prime
Minister Abdul Ahmit de Deba even fills the north west
of Libya, including the capital Tripoli. The other faction is
led by US Libyan national Khalifa Hafta, who commands the
(10:59):
Libyan National Army or LNA, who expressed loyalty to the
elected governments and are therefore often referred to as the
ho R the House of Represented Sentatives. I will try
to be consistent with the sacronyms, but no guarantees. Unsurprisingly,
after I was mentioned in accusations made in twenty three
(11:19):
for his militia's treatment of migrants, with some reports indicating
that they or he may be profiting of the smuggling SAM.
We pretty much got a warlord over there with an
army at his disposal who's not disincentivized not treat migrants
as things for his own profit.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Yeah right.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
Another fun fact that reveals how absolutely fucked up the
situation is the capture and subsequent release of infamous warlord
Osama Ala Mustri by Italy. Almasri had outstanding of warrants
from the International Criminal Court due to him having the
TRIPLEI branch of detention centers backed by the Special Defense Force,
(12:02):
both of which are used of atrocities and war crimes
during the Civil War. He was captured in Turin after
a soccer match. The ICC requested he be arrested, but
they turn based tribunal declined to approve the prove it,
after which Almasriios res niece back into Libya Jesus.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
So yeah, right, we.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
Love our ICC and then not following through on it.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, right, Like the ic C does not in fact
have an army that it can send out to people
who completely ignore it.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
Yeah, it's a body that doesn't have any power to
really enforce decisions. I know that the current Dutch Prime
Minister said of Benjaminett and Yahoo that they could just
ignore the outstanding warrant for his arrest, that Yao could
just visit the Netherlands, which, like, I don't even know
what to say about that.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Yeah, I mean, this is the nature of what you're
talking about in an extent, right, like the ICC's rulings
and all human rights only exist insofar as they are
convenient to the powerfuls as in the world.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
It's very much a rules for d but not for
me kind of attitudes.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
Yeah, I find it extremely disheartening and I feel myself
growing more cynical because of this world that I grew
up in, and I'm slowly seeing that all the rules
and all the great things that I was taught in
school are kind of not rules but more like guidelines.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, yeah, and that only applied to certain people.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
It's really heartbreaking to see, Like I mean, I've heard
it a lot from people, right, but especially from Burmese people.
They really educated themselves an international law when they were
going out to protest. At first, they talk about the
r twop, like the responsibility to protect, which is it
doesn't matter to concept in international law, but I've allowed
someone to intervene, and like they thought, this is the
(13:48):
international law, it's the world law, so someone's going to
do it, and like no, you know, over the months
that they were in the streets, over the thousands of
deaths that they've seen, now they've come to realize that
that law isn't there to protect them, that there's no
one who's coming to save them, and that's led to
them building a very unique and beautiful revolution. But at
(14:09):
the same time, it costs thousands of innocent lives, and
it's heartbreaking to see their faith being misplaced in this institution.
It doesn't care about it.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
We can talk very high and mighty about all these
laws and whether in war or whether about refugees, but
in the end, very often they just seem worth as
much as the paper they're written on. Yeah, exactly, It's
okay to become cynical after that realization.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
So, while the conditions for migrants were getting noticeably more
horrible in the aftermath of the twenty eleven intervention by NATO,
it was, as we said earlier, by no means the
start could definitely very much used migration as leverage to
gain concessions and standing among European governmental bodies. Exploitation of
(14:55):
migrants was already reported by human rights ruts back in
two thousand and nine. A similar vein the fact that
the Libyan Coast Guard routinely picks up migrants in the
international waters to return them to Libya has also been
documented as early as two thousand and nine. How Frontex
is involved with that will get to that later. These
processes and dynamics were very much already in play prior
(15:18):
to Cadelphie meeting his maker. This kidnapping of migrants, because
I don't think there's a better or a harsher word
for it is an explicit violation of international European and
Italian law. Non refolment, which is the principle in these laws,
means that no refugee shall be returned or expelled to
(15:40):
a territory against their will where their freedoms and life
are threatened. From January first, twenty nineteen to June thirtieth,
twenty twenty, Libya received sixty one point six million euros
as part of the European Union Integrated Border Management Assistance
Mission Mandate, with an explicit focus on establishing state security
(16:05):
structures in the country. Funding is meant to help stem
migration to Europe through strengthening the border management, law enforcement,
and criminal justice systems of Libya. Emphasis is placed on
disrupting the networks that operate the smuggling and trafficking of persons.
We already discussed these institutions are directly or indirectly contributing
(16:27):
very often to the exploitation and enslavement of refugees. So
that's sixty one million euros that has indirectly gone through
those very systems that enslave and torture people.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
So when many liberal authorities often have direct links to
militias or organized crime groups that engage in these practices.
Authorities in the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Interior,
the Department to Combat Irregular Migration, the Libyan Coast Guard,
and the Special Deterrence Force has all been implicated. It
has got so bad that even the Ministry of Defense
(17:01):
employs Coast Guard units that are made up of militias
who profit from these human rights abuses.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Yeah, it's fastical to think that like you could throw
some money at this problem and not just like more
empower these people.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
Yes, it's even I think when we talked last year
about this, I think Rows from Migrant mentioned it. But
the Libyans get paid twice because first they get paid
to make sure that to return these migrants back to Libya,
but then they can also get paid for selling them
into slavery.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Do you what do you even say to that?
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Yeah, I think it's genuinely unfavorable for a lot of
people than twenty twenty five. People are absolutely being captured
and sold into slavery. That is occurring.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
Yes, I've read some Human Rights Watch accounts of people
who were imprisoned for sometimes in years and then made
to work in one way or another for whoever ran
that particular detention center and the one that I'm thinking
of right now, after six years, I think that person
was able to buy himself away from the authorities than
(18:08):
his boat was captured within thirty minutes after he got
off the boat, Libya got back to a different attention
center where he spent four days, and I think after
that he got another chance on the boat, and I
think he was rescued by the volunteer or human rights
organizations who are also patrolling the sea north of Libya.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Yeah, we interviewed some of them talking of patrolling the seas.
Maybe this is an advert for a boat.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Yes, there will be a front TACs ad right now
for all the European listeners.
Speaker 5 (18:42):
Yeah, yeah, all right, we are back.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
So we left off with just briefly mentioning how the
Libyan state functions as part of this more than organized
crime syndicateive profits from the abuse of innocent people. And
this is in a way not really surprising. Back in
eighty five, academic Charles Tilly already argued that the states
as a form of social organization, it's pretty much indistinguishable
(19:16):
from an organized crime group. Yeah, I'll make sure that
the sources in the description below if anyone is interested,
But for those who don't want to read it, in
very short, they're both major organizations over which you have
very little control, and if you don't pay them the
taxes or protection money that they want, then people will
show up to break your legs. That's the two sentence
(19:38):
explanation of that article.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
After the principle of non refoulment has been violated, refugees
are brought to detention centers in theory under the supervision
of the DCIM. In practice, this does not hold up.
There are no official or verified numbers of how many
centers there are or how many people are even health captive.
They Libyan numbers just somewhere between seventeen to thirty five
(20:04):
facilities holding over seven thousand people. Human rights groups have
questions these numbers and argued that the number is likely
between ten thousand and twenty thousand people being held captive.
The reality is that we simply don't know. Yeah, we
don't know exactly how many cent facilities there are to
hold these people, and we don't know how many people
are in them. Human rights watchers or UN delegates often
(20:29):
don't get the full picture even if they go there
to visit and inspect the places. There was one part
of what I read where they would only be allowed
during the day, but then at night is when most
of the horrible stuff happens. Yeah, So still there's very
much a process of trying to not show what is
(20:50):
being done there. People in these detention centers are held
indefinitely and lack any sort of legal processes or procedures
to determine their state. In fact, according to a twenty
nineteen RUN report, there is no official procedure to assess
asylum status in Libya, meaning that in the legal sense,
(21:11):
this category is absolutely meaningless.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
On top of that, there's also a lack of a
process for exiting entertainment, so that that's an entire procedure
that is just done at the whim of whoever happens
to control like that particular facility.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah, and that could be someone who has just like
seized it by arms from whoever controlled it last, right, exactly.
Speaker 4 (21:33):
There's sometimes facilities are abandoned and they can become official.
There's also been reports of the government rating like unofficial centers,
but then recapturing those people and put them in official centers.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Great, that'll make it better.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
It would be funny if it wasn't so fucking horrible.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yeah, yeah, that's bleak.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
The DCM closed down five centers that had a history
of human rights violations. This act, however, had little effect
on halting abuses. Reports of beatings and torture continued as
some official centers closed by the DCIM quickly became unofficial
sites reopened and operated by militias. For example, the Buisa
(22:15):
official Attention Center in Saweya was ordered to close due
to reports of sexual abuse taking place. He reopened a
day later and operated under a new name managed by
armed groups. Dtaee explanation was seamlessly transferred from official to
unofficial banners, helping empower militants and criminal actors in the region.
(22:37):
So we're now going to take a deeper look at
these centers. I found an amazing article by Nadia aldayon
Aaron Anfinson and Graham Anfinson in there, and James that
this Israel the Journal of Human Trafficking, which is an
actual academic journal that exists.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Jesus, Yeah, I mean, I guess, yeah. If there's the
thing someone has written their PhD. This station about it,
it makes sense.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
I imagine this journal is just one or two articles
and for the rest it's just pictures of Jeffrey Epstein
and Andrew Tate, just back to back to back, because
ah yeah again, would would be funny if.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
It wasn't so fu Yeah, yeah, I can't. I can't
imagine working as an editor at the Journal of Human Trafficking.
Is the job that like you have that is like
the like the special force selection cause of mental health. Yeah,
like you you are facing all the challenges that can
be thrown in a person.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
Oh yeah, I'm sure there's like a psychologist like on
standby at the journal just to make sure like that
that the people running guitar all right.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
So these academics distinguished between three types of centers, official
meaning they are run by the states in so far
as that means anything, of course, then there are the
two unofficial types, which I will call semi official and officious.
Semi official centers are those run partially by state forces
in cooperation with local groups, militias, or other non state actors.
(24:10):
Officious centers are those run entirely by non state forces,
while conditions in official centers are air quotes better than
the latter two. It's by no means a good place
to be. None of these free categories are exempt from
all the violence being done to people. All three have
been named and implicated in abuses and violations. According to
(24:31):
the authors, there are about twenty one official sites, twelve
semi official and twenty two officious sides, with one reportedly
being run by ISIS in Naphalia back in twenty to fifteen.
Cool ISIS had a stronghold in Libya back in the day.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yeah, I did.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
Yeah, And the fact that ISIS might have been involved
in human trafficking is the least surprising thing here.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
I mean they were trafficking people into the Islamic State,
into their what are their so called Cali right.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
Yeah, this is progressed, and now trafficking people away from it. Yeah,
this is a small victories. Of all these sites that
I just mentioned, a remarkable amount is intriqually, the capital
of Libya. Sometimes these sites overlap with areas with known
prostitution rings. The researchers found at least nine such networks,
with the majority of the sex slaves being from sub
(25:22):
Saharan regions and to east Africa, they are mostly women,
but it also happens to men. Libya has no laws
or procedures to criminalize male sex trafficking while men are
still the minority. I do think it's worth mentioning. Yeah, absolutely,
that is also something that happens and most likely underreported on.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Yeah, I think it's something you'd really struggle, Like the
nature of masculinity and like its toxicity makes it hard
for people to come forward to you and say this
is happening to.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
Me, right exactly, And it makes that that process becomes
even harder if there is no legal framework to stand on.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Yeah, exactly, there's like there's nothing to say, like this
is that at least you can say what's happening to
you is wrong. It's perceived as a crime, right, Like,
if that's not there, it says no, like how can
I support this person?
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Right?
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Who do you direct that person to? Like exactly, anybody
who has been trafficked and forced into sex work, like,
and I've spoken to migrants for whom that has been
the case. Like there's a great deal of stigma they
have to overcome, which they shouldn't have to, Like, it's
not none of what's happened to them is their choice,
but it's very difficult for them to talk about it,
and it's very unlikely for them to really be able
(26:36):
to get any form of accountability for the people who
did this to them. And that's in settings outside of Libya,
like in Libya. Fucking good luck, I imagine, Like.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
I think that's just a problem in general, not just
in Libya. Yeah, it's arguably much worse than Livia. But yeah,
even in countries that we're much more familiar with, this
is happening, and it's still very hard to obtain the
accountability from the perpetrators that any better world would be happening. Yeah,
(27:07):
So I am now going to quote for the article
for the next batch of horrors for women and girls,
various degrees of sexual violence were commonplace. Facilities that did
allow some angio access barred visitations at night, which is
when many severe abuses occurred. Detention center operators performed systemic
(27:27):
rape on women and teenage girls on a nightly basis.
Those that resisted were threatened with death. Others were killed
by severe sexual assault and rape. Impregnations by detention center
of officials also occurred. So, yeah, I'm going to briefly
cite the accounts of someone who has been for that Afni,
(27:51):
which is a pseudonym. An eighteen year old Somali woman
told me, very softly that she was gang raped by
smugglers multiple times the end of the two years she
spent confined in a smuggler warehouse in Kufra, released from
the warehouse and dispatched the Tripoli defend for herself. When
she became pregnant, Ofne gave birth to a little girl,
(28:11):
depending on handouts and help from strangers to survive. She
told me that when she decided to attempt the sea
crossing with her daughter, they ended up in another night
marriage smuggler warehouse, where one of the smugglers refused to
find food for her baby unless Afne had sex with him.
Her daughter died when she was seven months old.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
God, oh, what a fucking leak thing.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
Yes, the entire article that that quote was frob is
like a rife with crimes like this.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah, right, is horrific stuff.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
I'll make sure that it's in the notes below if
you would want to read that. Yeah, and absolutely no
shame with people don't want to read.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
This because it is fucked Yeah, yeah, you didn't have
to expose yourself to all this. You don't have to
know every detail of it to care about people like,
it's okay not to read it.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
Yeah, ah, so I want to close this particular censu
budget brutally driving this point home. But like women and
teenage girls are being raped to death over there on
a systemic level. Yeah, and I'm fucking disgusted with the
fact that the EU is still sending money there that
(29:26):
is indirectly facilitating this.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Yeah, I've mean fucking well, it gets on it's high
horse about like gender and quality and women's rights and
such things, and then like unless it's the inconvenient gender
equality of migrants, right, or that the rights of migrants.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
Which yeah, I need a cigarette now.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Fuck.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
It's the fucking worst thing that I deal with talking
to people about work. It's like people who have survived
sexual violence, or like people who can reasonably expect to
encounter it and making this journey because they think that
it's there only option anyway.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Yeah, It's it's not that people who undertake this journey
to a batel life that they once are unaware of
the risks. It's despite the risks that they're just doing it.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Yeah, that's the same in the Americas, Rightly, people understand
that the you know, I mentioned this in my Darien
Gap episode, but very young children are subject to sexual violence,
which also sometimes results in their death. Yeah, and like
they understand that that world is at such an exaggerated
level of inequality that people are willing to take those
(30:34):
risks because that's the way the only way that they
feel they can secure a safe future for their children.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
Yeah. It is a level of courage that I cannot fathom. Yeah,
me need that. The best I could do was just
acknowledge that I can't fathom it. But that's also like
a very bitter built to swallow.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Yeah, it is like I uh, you know, I attend
wars for work sometimes. And the women who take on
the migration, especially when not that men are not so
back to sexual violence, say ah, but it's probably more
likely for women to experience it. The women who take
on the migration journey alone or with their children, like
those people's bravery, Like I can't fathom being that brave.
(31:15):
I can't imagine how one can be that courageous a
dedicated to one's child. And we talked in our podcast
recently about Primrose who came with her daughter. Like that's
someone I'm still like just in awe of, you know,
like you don't see that kind of courage and dedication
(31:36):
and just like ability to push through things that are
horrific with this goal in mind of reaching the United States,
Like it's and it continues to be something that I
struggled to find words to express, obviously, but it's really something.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
I want to say.
Speaker 4 (31:54):
Something just speechless, Yeah, not much to say.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Uh, you know who else should be speechless?
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Is it the products and services to support this podcast?
Speaker 2 (32:07):
I sure hope. So just two minutes of silence.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Yeah, hopefully it will just be a little moment for
quiet contemplation for all of you out there.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
All Right, we're back.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
We've we've had a glass of water, and we're going
to keep doing the podcast anyway.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Yes, rehydrates a bit. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
So in terms of like explicit accounts, that was it. Okay, Yeah,
So if someone had to skip over that part, that
part of the episode should be done. You can start
listening again. So as of this recording, They're Missing Migrants Project,
who tracks migrant depths and those who become missing. Between
(32:58):
our quotes, approximately thirty two thousand people are either dead
or missing and presumed death in the Mediterranean that I
have been confirmed Jesus. The overwhelming majority of these people
drowned while attempting the crossing. Two five hundred and eighty
two of these cases were registered in twenty twenty four.
(33:20):
Last year, roughly seventy thousand people attempted a crossing, according
to statistics from the European Commission. This may not appear
as a lot of deaths compared to the crossings, but
this figure does not take into account deaths on the
journey towards the crossing. I was not able to verify
how the number of seventy thousand was made up, as
(33:42):
the EO website I got it from is a collection
of data from different countries and agencies who register it.
What do you think is safe to assume, and let
me emphasize assume here is that people captured by Italian
multice cypriots or Libyan co authorities is included in this number,
(34:04):
so that those are people who've attempted the crossing and
then are taken back to Libya, possibly undertaking the journey again.
Yeah right, because yeah, I know you've stressed this a
few times. But a number one does not mean that
it's just a single person. It can be the same
person who tries to cross multiple times.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
Yeah, right, people will will peak crossings. I think we
reach a point where the numbers are not and not
that every point of these people is a person, right,
But like I would be any less pissed off if
it was fifty thousand.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
Like after a certain amount, it just becomes a number
because we just can can't imagine how many people that is.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
Yeah, Like we shouldn't ever have to conceive the thirty
two thousand people drowning, right, that it's not a thing
that in the twenty first century we should allow to
happen as a society, Like, yeah, this shit, Like, you know,
I've participated meat Day along the border and very familiar
with death at the border, But the scale of this
(35:06):
is unfathomable, even to someone who's spent a decent amount
of time across the migrant trails of the America. Is
that two thousand and five hundred two deaths in a year.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Like that's a small village.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely the other yearly basis, Yeah, it's a
decent size city. If you take that thirty two thousand number.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
Yeah, it's like a mid sized music festival of people
who didn't need to die.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
I checked the websites called info Migrants, and they estimate
that the Libyan Coast Guard alone has returned again. Air
quotes around twenty one thousand migrants are caught during a
crossing attempt, So the vast majority of these people end
up back in the detention centers we discussed earlier, So
(35:53):
that's around one for every three and a half people
being captured.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Jesus. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:01):
There was at some point a video making the rounds,
and it was this African woman on a boat, filmed
with like a mobile phone, and she was just crying
and was just saying like, Hey, if the Libyan Coast
God shows up, I'm jumping overboard. No way am I
going back there.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Yeah, I've seen that.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
That is one of those statements that I will immediately believe.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Yeah, people have self immolated in those detention centers like
Suich just dead misery and their desire for the world
to see them. I guess I can understand why someone
would just rather stop being.
Speaker 4 (36:37):
So the little calculation I just made that leaves us
with forty nine thousand people making the crossing, of which
eighty two diets resulting in forty six thousand, four hundred
people entering Europe through the Libyan roots. Again, these are approximations.
(36:58):
More exact numbers will never know. Yeah. I tried to
track money and expenditures a tiny bit to see how
the EU is dealing with this. It's not one of
my strong suits. I want to be upfront with that.
I was able to find that between twenty twenty and
twenty twenty three, THEE granted at least one hundred and
(37:19):
five million euro under the European Integrated Border Management Assistance Mission.
This is money that is directly going to Libya for
assistance in managing our border. This number does not include
money directly or indirectly given to Libya from individual member
states or from the budget of the EU's Border Agency FRONTACS.
(37:42):
The latter has seen an absolute massive increase in their budgets. Yeah,
from around two hundred and fifty billion in twenty sixteen
to over eight hundred and forty billion in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
God, yeah, that's a vast increase.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
Yes, And what's relatively recently been happening is that rather
than have their own vessels in the sea. They are
using air reconnaissance in the form of drones or other
airborne vehicles spot spot boat boats or thingies with migrants
and then they give that information to the Libyan coast
(38:18):
Guard they can pick them up, right. And this is
where the EU is I would say, directly complicit in
like the abuse that that that's happening in Libya.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah, I think that's a perfectly reasonable thing to say.
Speaker 4 (38:32):
Because we know what it is likely to certainly going
to happen to the people that are picked up by
the Libyan coast Guard.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
And if you're saying that Haley beIN coasted Alcaemy pick
up these people, you know what's going to happen to
those people, like and it's not good. And they keep
doing it despite it being more than a decade of
evidence at this point abusive migrants.
Speaker 4 (38:55):
Italy, in particular, as the country receives a lot of
migrants from metaty Iranian crossings, is keen on helping Libya
in terms of training, material and funding additional agreements between
the two countries. At another uncomfortable light on the dynamic,
there was first the EU Libya slash Italy Libya Memorandum
of Understanding signed in twenty seventeen. It saw an enhanced
(39:21):
enhancement of military insecurity related to trying to prevent migrants
from making a crossing advertently or inadvertently trying to make
Libya their final stop and trap them there under the
conditions that we just discussed. That agreement is a continuation
of the Treaty on Friendship, Partnership and Corporation that was
(39:42):
signed by Libya and Italy back in twenty eighth which
described the corporation in detail visv combating illegal migration from
Libya to the EU. We also have the Multi Declaration
from twenty seventeen which only strengthened unbacked governmental organs within
the EU, as well as a commitment to further assist
(40:04):
Libya in training, in providing funding and technical assistance. Those
are the main purposes of disagreements, which is to prevent
people from passing the prestigious gates of Fortress Europe because politically,
we'd rather add them to the mortar with which those
walls are built.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
Jesus.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
And it is these conditions that Washington Ghules thought would
be a suitable place to send migrants to who do
not speak the language know the people have legal representation
or assumably even have the money to do anything. We've
barely spoken of the civil war that is still going
on there, Yeah, with like fighting in the capital of
(40:43):
Troopoli happened like two weeks ago. We haven't spoken about
any legal or law related issues that these people would
invariably run into were they to be deported to Libya.
It's the umpteen for example, of colonialism, military and from states,
war wandering, and the transfer of problems to another place
(41:04):
or to another generation. Very much like climate change, actions
such as these will have immense direct and ripple effects
that our children, anchorant children will learn the consequences of.
And the last bit I've added because let's hope that
no one is going to be sent Olivia from the States.
(41:26):
But I can very much imagine that those people will
face the same horrors that they will have to create
their own little communities just to be able to get by. Yeah,
I can imagine some people might might run into ISIS
over there and become radicalized. We could also get like
(41:47):
small pockets of people who just write a survived but
are still stuck there and grow resentment there is no
real way to estimate what the consequences are going to
be of deporting pepeople there other than that like the
cruelty is happening that Washington rules are aiming for.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
I think that the point is to hurt these people
as much as possible at the moment, and then there
isn't really much of a long term thought process beyond that. Like,
I guess I would like to say that people were
enraged at the thought of the United States sending migrants
to Liby, and they should be. I'm glad that they were,
but they should also be in rage at the reality
of the European Union doing it every single day. Yes,
(42:32):
way more than twelve people, and like you should care
about that too, especially if you're in Europe, Like you know,
obviously I am a person from Europe. I think it's easy,
like for people to get this kind of smug social
democracy kind of like, oh, look at the Americans, they're
so fucked up. Not saying things aren't fucked up here,
they are, but like the EU is doing some fucked
(42:53):
up shit to migrants, and like people in Europe should
be in the streets about that too.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
Definitely, like this is just the biggest of all the issues.
But there's also abuses and human rights violations happening in
the Balkans for the people who take that crossing, there's
people who try to cross from a Rocco to Spain. Yeah,
who also encounter again, not as bad as the things
we just talked about, but by no means it's good.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah, definitely shouldn't be happening.
Speaker 4 (43:23):
I don't even want to use words like good or
bad because like they tend to lose all meaning. Yeah,
like less bad doesn't necessarily mean good.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Yeah, that's really doesn't.
Speaker 4 (43:33):
It means less worse. And yeah, there are there are
places to make that crossing that are less worse than Libya.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
But still, yeah, that doesn't mean any of it is desirable, yeah,
or like that we should accept any of it.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
No, No, people should be fucking mad about all of this.
Speaker 4 (43:50):
And I also I would like to have to go
back a little bit about what you said about like
this buck European the social democracy. Yeah, like that's definitely
attitude that's not uncommon among Europeans. But then again, we
very often fail to look into our own backyards. And
(44:10):
also Europe just tends to be politically a few years
behind the US, but we've also seen a rise in
autocratic regimes like Victor Orbonn Yeah, massive example. Maloney in
Italy is another one. But also in my own country
(44:31):
of the Netherlands, they try to bypass parliament in order
to make an emergency law to make sure that migrants
wouldn't enter the Netherlands, and as we speak, they're threatening
to stop the government formation if no stricter measures against
migrants are being taken.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (44:50):
So it's these little seeds of autocracy that are almost
more worrying because it's these little step that happened and
before you know it, things are getting worse quick.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
Like, anyone who pays attention to the US can see
that the vehicle on which fascism was delivered to us
is being delivered to us in a better way of saying,
it is anti micro sentiment, right, Like that is how
this country built the toolkit that is now being used.
(45:26):
And you know, the rest of the world should pay
attention to that, I hope.
Speaker 4 (45:30):
Yeah, we should see it as a warning sign, not
as a manual.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Yeah. That's a good weapon, it.
Speaker 4 (45:37):
Yeah, Unfortunately it's being used as a manual by certain
European governments.
Speaker 3 (45:41):
Yeah, so thank you for sharing that traumatic piece for
reporting with I think that's that's rough.
Speaker 4 (45:50):
I would say you're welcome if it wasn't a fucking
grim to say that at the end of all that.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (45:57):
No, I'm happy that I read a lot and put together.
I'm also going to have to find a puppy and
cuddle the puppy for a few hours.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Yeah. So yeah, that's all I have for now. Great, Yeah,
that's all I got to you. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for It Could Happen Here, listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hi everyone, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
It's me James today and I am lucky to be
joined again by Mick. We're going to talk today about Libya,
and just like right off the top, this is going
to be a sad episode. Not much good happens to
migrants in Libya. A lot of bad stuff happens. And
if you someone who prefers not to hear about like
violence or sexual violence or incarceration, it's probably some other
(00:32):
stuff I'm overlooking. This might not be the episode for you,
and that's fine.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
But Mick, how you doing.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Hi James, I'm goods. I'm goods.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
That was an uplifting intro, wasn't it. I felt like
that was a really positive way to start the show.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
Yes, definitely, definitely, but probably very warranted because it's not
going to be a fun episode. Like, there's torture, there's imprisonments,
there's some slave months. It's horrible. Yeah, Libya is probably
one of the worst countries in the world to be
a migrant at the moment, if not the worst.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Yeah, I and you have a whole industry, a whole
part of their economy that is predicated on enslaving migrants.
Lately selling people and all of the other kinds of
violence that come from that.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Exactly.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
There's I think over twenty or thirty different facilities with
varying degrees of government involvement in those facilities, and it's
very hard to pinpoint exactly like where does the government
and where does this human trafficking business begin? Right, It's
similar to like early mid Soviet Union, where there was
(01:44):
so much organized crime happening within the government that it
was also impossible to distinguish, like where one began and
where the other ended.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah, like which was which exactly.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
It was under breast nev I think, but don't don't
quote me on that.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeah, so yeah, so give us a lad only.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Well, first of all, maybe I guess if people have
been not listening, why are we talking about Libya?
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Well, on May eighth, that was reported that the Trump
administration was considering sporting migrants to this North African country,
which is a new low. Yeah, like the bar is
buried and these motherfuckers just grabbed the shovel. I don't
think it's possible to exaggerate just how cruel this would
(02:29):
be if it were to happen. As I said earlier,
Libya is probably the worst country in the world to
be a migrant at the moment. And to illustrate that,
I'm going to briefly quote from this twenty twenty two
and it's the International article Men, women and children returned
to Libya returned in this case meaning that they tried
(02:49):
to cross the Mediterranean and were picked up by the
Libyan coast guards. Returned to Libya face arbitrary detention, torture,
cruel and inhumane detension conditions, rape and sexual violence, extortion,
forced labor, and unlawful killings. Instead of addressing this human
rights crisis, the Libyan Government of National Unity now called
(03:12):
the GMU, continues to facilitate further abuses entrench impunity, as
illustrated by its recent appointment of Mohammed al Koha as
Director of the Department for Combating Illegal Migration, which we
will be referring to as the DCIM from now on.
To make that entire list. Somehow worse, there has been
(03:34):
extensive documentation from human rights groups that strongly suggest that
the DCIM works together with non governmental militias, making the
latter responsible for at least six unofficial detention centers. Although
it is reasonable to assume that there might be more.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
So reporting out of Libya is hard to understate it. Yes,
Sally Hayden has an excellent book called My Fourth Time
We Drowned that Like, one of the things I like
about it is it explains like her journalistic process, and
it's people who are detained in places where they can't
get out clubbing together to get one message out on
(04:14):
the one phone that one person smuggled in in part right,
use someone had the battery, someone had the screen or whatever,
and someone else had a SIM card and like that
way they could they could get a message out. But
it's everything that we hear about. We can assume that
there is probably a lot more of it happening that
we haven't heard about, or at least some more of
(04:34):
it happening that we haven't heard about.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Yeah, the worst part about this is that it's knowing
that it's probably worse and it's probably more extensive than
we know. Because Yeah, as you said, Livia is a
hard country to do this kind of reporting, and I
am assuming that it's not very safe for a journalists
to just go there and go talk to people.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah, Yeah, And like at the end of the day,
you're not just as I'm sure you'll explain, You're not
just fucking with the Libyan government. You're fucking with the
European Union is absolutely complicit in this and like they
ain't coming to save you.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
We'll get to that how work. The EU is complicited
in both funding and in actions. Yeah, so let's first
get this onto the proper context. We're going to dive
for bits into the history of Libya because that plays
a major part in how this situation is right now.
So we'll start by talking about the former dictator Muamar Kadaffi.
(05:35):
He took control of Libya through a military kudetta and
ruled it from nineteen sixty nine up until he faced
mob justice in the Libyan Civil War in twenty eleven.
He is or was accused of human rights violations and
cracking down heart on this scent and opposition. Initially was
on the list of states which sponsored terrorism, but from
(05:57):
two thousand and four onwards he slowly began can to
rekindle ties with a number of countries, with one of
the main champions for rehabilitation being Italy, the former colonial
power that had occupied Libya. To no one's surprised we're
bringing in colonialism here. Now, James, you get three guesses
as to what one of the cooperations was between Libya
(06:19):
and Italy.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Well, I can get many things. Ray, there's some stories
about good Affi and Berlusconi, but we won't talk about this.
Was it preventing migrant crossing the Mediterranean Sea?
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yes, that is true.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Yeah, something the Italians love to do.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
It was happening back then as well. Yeah, it's a
really weird relationship between Italy and Libya. That's also kind
of fascinating. But then we're going to get all the
way off topic if we dive into that.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
So, somewhere between two thousand and four and two thousand
and five, Libya was supplied with money and equipment to
help stem the flow of illegal migration coming from Africa.
Kadaffi himself said in twenty ten that this was to
prevent the loss of European cultural identity to a new
black Europa, after Libya was paid fifty million euro for
(07:13):
this purpose that same year.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Yeah, yeah, based anti colonial Yes, I'm sure that's a
Gadaffi did nothing wrong movement that exists on some corner
of Reddit that I haven't Oh, got that plumitted into yet,
but yeah, this guy was a third.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
I cannot find a stick long enough that I would
touch that community with, to be honest. That's also something
that plays in here, and that I think, like you
read a lot of human rights reports, you come across it.
But there's also like a distinct form of racism for
Sub Saharan or like Eastern African people. Definitely, Yeah, that's
also going to play into this. It's just a smorgas
(07:48):
board of bad stuff.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah, I mean for people who perhaps grew up in
the United States, you know for their were and received
verio education in school about African geography and politics like
this can be hard to grasp, right, Like Africa is
sometimes perceived as a country, not a continent in sort
of discourse in the United States. And that's again like
it's not people's fault, like it's it's in nature of
(08:11):
our education system failing people. But yeah, if you're not familiar,
rarely view it's called in North Africa, and like great
replacement style racist conspiracies absolutely exist in North Africa about
people from Sub Saharan Africa. Either that the parts of
Africa that are beneath the Sahara desert and in the
which you could find by looking at them that. But
(08:33):
yet like just because this is in Africa, like racist
shit is absolutely going down. No.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
I think it was highlighted a bit when the president
or Prime Minister of Tunisia was cracking down on migration
that there was also like a very distinct racism against
against sub Saharan Africans.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, but it is.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
It's a global thing where because racist is a social
construct and it's not like an inherent thing that that
You'll hear this a lot. You know, I've worked in
Hispaniola a lot, Right, the island that contains hating Dominican Republic,
the island which receives millions of dollars from the United
States to reinforce the border between the two nations that
(09:13):
make it up. You will hear this reference to Haitian
people as black from Afro Caribbean Dominican people, right, And
this idea that there's this racial distinction between the two,
that it's a nature of race, right, it's quite social
construct between mobilized to create a power dynamic.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Yeah, that's a whole other topic of discussion, because I
identity and race are so intermingled but also so fluid. Yeah,
you could talk for hours about it, but that's not
why we're here. Yeah, a warming up ties with Libya
was a pragmatic approach from the EU, as it lies
just on the doorstep of Fortress Europe, but also marked
(09:53):
the start of set fortress to start externalizing its borders
into Africa, slowly working towards ki migrants and refugees from
setting food on European soil, which would entitle them to
apply for asylum. So even that step that's encoded in
European law, we're trying to like circumvent by just making
(10:14):
sure that they don't cross the Mediterranean.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Right.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
So sometime later, when the civil war began during the
Art Spring, Yeah, Libyan dissidents got rid of the sex
best that was more mar Kadaffi. So the world became
a slightly better place after that. Currently, there are two
major factions fighting over power in Libya, although there are
numerous other groups involved. To dive into this would probably
(10:37):
take up most of the episodes, so I will leave
that aside. Yeah, the first of the major factions is
the GNU, the Government of National Unity, led by Prime
Minister Abdul Ahmit de Deba even fills the north west
of Libya, including the capital Tripoli. The other faction is
led by US Libyan national Khalifa Hafta, who commands the
(10:59):
Libyan National Army or LNA, who expressed loyalty to the
elected governments and are therefore often referred to as the
ho R the House of Represented Sentatives. I will try
to be consistent with the sacronyms, but no guarantees. Unsurprisingly,
after I was mentioned in accusations made in twenty three
(11:19):
for his militia's treatment of migrants, with some reports indicating
that they or he may be profiting of the smuggling SAM.
We pretty much got a warlord over there with an
army at his disposal who's not disincentivized not treat migrants
as things for his own profit.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Yeah right.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
Another fun fact that reveals how absolutely fucked up the
situation is the capture and subsequent release of infamous warlord
Osama Ala Mustri by Italy. Almasri had outstanding of warrants
from the International Criminal Court due to him having the
TRIPLEI branch of detention centers backed by the Special Defense Force,
(12:02):
both of which are used of atrocities and war crimes
during the Civil War. He was captured in Turin after
a soccer match. The ICC requested he be arrested, but
they turn based tribunal declined to approve the prove it,
after which Almasriios res niece back into Libya Jesus.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
So yeah, right, we.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
Love our ICC and then not following through on it.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, right, Like the ic C does not in fact
have an army that it can send out to people
who completely ignore it.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
Yeah, it's a body that doesn't have any power to
really enforce decisions. I know that the current Dutch Prime
Minister said of Benjaminett and Yahoo that they could just
ignore the outstanding warrant for his arrest, that Yao could
just visit the Netherlands, which, like, I don't even know
what to say about that.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Yeah, I mean, this is the nature of what you're
talking about in an extent, right, like the ICC's rulings
and all human rights only exist insofar as they are
convenient to the powerfuls as in the world.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
It's very much a rules for d but not for
me kind of attitudes.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
Yeah, I find it extremely disheartening and I feel myself
growing more cynical because of this world that I grew
up in, and I'm slowly seeing that all the rules
and all the great things that I was taught in
school are kind of not rules but more like guidelines.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, yeah, and that only applied to certain people.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
It's really heartbreaking to see, Like I mean, I've heard
it a lot from people, right, but especially from Burmese people.
They really educated themselves an international law when they were
going out to protest. At first, they talk about the
r twop, like the responsibility to protect, which is it
doesn't matter to concept in international law, but I've allowed
someone to intervene, and like they thought, this is the
(13:48):
international law, it's the world law, so someone's going to
do it, and like no, you know, over the months
that they were in the streets, over the thousands of
deaths that they've seen, now they've come to realize that
that law isn't there to protect them, that there's no
one who's coming to save them, and that's led to
them building a very unique and beautiful revolution. But at
(14:09):
the same time, it costs thousands of innocent lives, and
it's heartbreaking to see their faith being misplaced in this institution.
It doesn't care about it.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
We can talk very high and mighty about all these
laws and whether in war or whether about refugees, but
in the end, very often they just seem worth as
much as the paper they're written on. Yeah, exactly, It's
okay to become cynical after that realization.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
So, while the conditions for migrants were getting noticeably more
horrible in the aftermath of the twenty eleven intervention by NATO,
it was, as we said earlier, by no means the
start could definitely very much used migration as leverage to
gain concessions and standing among European governmental bodies. Exploitation of
(14:55):
migrants was already reported by human rights ruts back in
two thousand and nine. A similar vein the fact that
the Libyan Coast Guard routinely picks up migrants in the
international waters to return them to Libya has also been
documented as early as two thousand and nine. How Frontex
is involved with that will get to that later. These
processes and dynamics were very much already in play prior
(15:18):
to Cadelphie meeting his maker. This kidnapping of migrants, because
I don't think there's a better or a harsher word
for it is an explicit violation of international European and
Italian law. Non refolment, which is the principle in these laws,
means that no refugee shall be returned or expelled to
(15:40):
a territory against their will where their freedoms and life
are threatened. From January first, twenty nineteen to June thirtieth,
twenty twenty, Libya received sixty one point six million euros
as part of the European Union Integrated Border Management Assistance
Mission Mandate, with an explicit focus on establishing state security
(16:05):
structures in the country. Funding is meant to help stem
migration to Europe through strengthening the border management, law enforcement,
and criminal justice systems of Libya. Emphasis is placed on
disrupting the networks that operate the smuggling and trafficking of persons.
We already discussed these institutions are directly or indirectly contributing
(16:27):
very often to the exploitation and enslavement of refugees. So
that's sixty one million euros that has indirectly gone through
those very systems that enslave and torture people.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
So when many liberal authorities often have direct links to
militias or organized crime groups that engage in these practices.
Authorities in the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Interior,
the Department to Combat Irregular Migration, the Libyan Coast Guard,
and the Special Deterrence Force has all been implicated. It
has got so bad that even the Ministry of Defense
(17:01):
employs Coast Guard units that are made up of militias
who profit from these human rights abuses.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Yeah, it's fastical to think that like you could throw
some money at this problem and not just like more
empower these people.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
Yes, it's even I think when we talked last year
about this, I think Rows from Migrant mentioned it. But
the Libyans get paid twice because first they get paid
to make sure that to return these migrants back to Libya,
but then they can also get paid for selling them
into slavery.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Do you what do you even say to that?
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Yeah, I think it's genuinely unfavorable for a lot of
people than twenty twenty five. People are absolutely being captured
and sold into slavery. That is occurring.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
Yes, I've read some Human Rights Watch accounts of people
who were imprisoned for sometimes in years and then made
to work in one way or another for whoever ran
that particular detention center and the one that I'm thinking
of right now, after six years, I think that person
was able to buy himself away from the authorities than
(18:08):
his boat was captured within thirty minutes after he got
off the boat, Libya got back to a different attention
center where he spent four days, and I think after
that he got another chance on the boat, and I
think he was rescued by the volunteer or human rights
organizations who are also patrolling the sea north of Libya.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Yeah, we interviewed some of them talking of patrolling the seas.
Maybe this is an advert for a boat.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Yes, there will be a front TACs ad right now
for all the European listeners.
Speaker 5 (18:42):
Yeah, yeah, all right, we are back.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
So we left off with just briefly mentioning how the
Libyan state functions as part of this more than organized
crime syndicateive profits from the abuse of innocent people. And
this is in a way not really surprising. Back in
eighty five, academic Charles Tilly already argued that the states
as a form of social organization, it's pretty much indistinguishable
(19:16):
from an organized crime group. Yeah, I'll make sure that
the sources in the description below if anyone is interested,
But for those who don't want to read it, in
very short, they're both major organizations over which you have
very little control, and if you don't pay them the
taxes or protection money that they want, then people will
show up to break your legs. That's the two sentence
(19:38):
explanation of that article.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
After the principle of non refoulment has been violated, refugees
are brought to detention centers in theory under the supervision
of the DCIM. In practice, this does not hold up.
There are no official or verified numbers of how many
centers there are or how many people are even health captive.
They Libyan numbers just somewhere between seventeen to thirty five
(20:04):
facilities holding over seven thousand people. Human rights groups have
questions these numbers and argued that the number is likely
between ten thousand and twenty thousand people being held captive.
The reality is that we simply don't know. Yeah, we
don't know exactly how many cent facilities there are to
hold these people, and we don't know how many people
are in them. Human rights watchers or UN delegates often
(20:29):
don't get the full picture even if they go there
to visit and inspect the places. There was one part
of what I read where they would only be allowed
during the day, but then at night is when most
of the horrible stuff happens. Yeah, So still there's very
much a process of trying to not show what is
(20:50):
being done there. People in these detention centers are held
indefinitely and lack any sort of legal processes or procedures
to determine their state. In fact, according to a twenty
nineteen RUN report, there is no official procedure to assess
asylum status in Libya, meaning that in the legal sense,
(21:11):
this category is absolutely meaningless.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
On top of that, there's also a lack of a
process for exiting entertainment, so that that's an entire procedure
that is just done at the whim of whoever happens
to control like that particular facility.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah, and that could be someone who has just like
seized it by arms from whoever controlled it last, right, exactly.
Speaker 4 (21:33):
There's sometimes facilities are abandoned and they can become official.
There's also been reports of the government rating like unofficial centers,
but then recapturing those people and put them in official centers.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Great, that'll make it better.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
It would be funny if it wasn't so fucking horrible.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yeah, yeah, that's bleak.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
The DCM closed down five centers that had a history
of human rights violations. This act, however, had little effect
on halting abuses. Reports of beatings and torture continued as
some official centers closed by the DCIM quickly became unofficial
sites reopened and operated by militias. For example, the Buisa
(22:15):
official Attention Center in Saweya was ordered to close due
to reports of sexual abuse taking place. He reopened a
day later and operated under a new name managed by
armed groups. Dtaee explanation was seamlessly transferred from official to
unofficial banners, helping empower militants and criminal actors in the region.
(22:37):
So we're now going to take a deeper look at
these centers. I found an amazing article by Nadia aldayon
Aaron Anfinson and Graham Anfinson in there, and James that
this Israel the Journal of Human Trafficking, which is an
actual academic journal that exists.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Jesus, Yeah, I mean, I guess, yeah. If there's the
thing someone has written their PhD. This station about it,
it makes sense.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
I imagine this journal is just one or two articles
and for the rest it's just pictures of Jeffrey Epstein
and Andrew Tate, just back to back to back, because
ah yeah again, would would be funny if.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
It wasn't so fu Yeah, yeah, I can't. I can't
imagine working as an editor at the Journal of Human Trafficking.
Is the job that like you have that is like
the like the special force selection cause of mental health. Yeah,
like you you are facing all the challenges that can
be thrown in a person.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
Oh yeah, I'm sure there's like a psychologist like on
standby at the journal just to make sure like that
that the people running guitar all right.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
So these academics distinguished between three types of centers, official
meaning they are run by the states in so far
as that means anything, of course, then there are the
two unofficial types, which I will call semi official and officious.
Semi official centers are those run partially by state forces
in cooperation with local groups, militias, or other non state actors.
(24:10):
Officious centers are those run entirely by non state forces,
while conditions in official centers are air quotes better than
the latter two. It's by no means a good place
to be. None of these free categories are exempt from
all the violence being done to people. All three have
been named and implicated in abuses and violations. According to
(24:31):
the authors, there are about twenty one official sites, twelve
semi official and twenty two officious sides, with one reportedly
being run by ISIS in Naphalia back in twenty to fifteen.
Cool ISIS had a stronghold in Libya back in the day.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yeah, I did.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
Yeah, And the fact that ISIS might have been involved
in human trafficking is the least surprising thing here.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
I mean they were trafficking people into the Islamic State,
into their what are their so called Cali right.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
Yeah, this is progressed, and now trafficking people away from it. Yeah,
this is a small victories. Of all these sites that
I just mentioned, a remarkable amount is intriqually, the capital
of Libya. Sometimes these sites overlap with areas with known
prostitution rings. The researchers found at least nine such networks,
with the majority of the sex slaves being from sub
(25:22):
Saharan regions and to east Africa, they are mostly women,
but it also happens to men. Libya has no laws
or procedures to criminalize male sex trafficking while men are
still the minority. I do think it's worth mentioning. Yeah, absolutely,
that is also something that happens and most likely underreported on.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Yeah, I think it's something you'd really struggle, Like the
nature of masculinity and like its toxicity makes it hard
for people to come forward to you and say this
is happening to.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
Me, right exactly, And it makes that that process becomes
even harder if there is no legal framework to stand on.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Yeah, exactly, there's like there's nothing to say, like this
is that at least you can say what's happening to
you is wrong. It's perceived as a crime, right, Like,
if that's not there, it says no, like how can
I support this person?
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Right?
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Who do you direct that person to? Like exactly, anybody
who has been trafficked and forced into sex work, like,
and I've spoken to migrants for whom that has been
the case. Like there's a great deal of stigma they
have to overcome, which they shouldn't have to, Like, it's
not none of what's happened to them is their choice,
but it's very difficult for them to talk about it,
and it's very unlikely for them to really be able
(26:36):
to get any form of accountability for the people who
did this to them. And that's in settings outside of Libya,
like in Libya. Fucking good luck, I imagine, Like.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
I think that's just a problem in general, not just
in Libya. Yeah, it's arguably much worse than Livia. But yeah,
even in countries that we're much more familiar with, this
is happening, and it's still very hard to obtain the
accountability from the perpetrators that any better world would be happening. Yeah,
(27:07):
So I am now going to quote for the article
for the next batch of horrors for women and girls,
various degrees of sexual violence were commonplace. Facilities that did
allow some angio access barred visitations at night, which is
when many severe abuses occurred. Detention center operators performed systemic
(27:27):
rape on women and teenage girls on a nightly basis.
Those that resisted were threatened with death. Others were killed
by severe sexual assault and rape. Impregnations by detention center
of officials also occurred. So, yeah, I'm going to briefly
cite the accounts of someone who has been for that Afni,
(27:51):
which is a pseudonym. An eighteen year old Somali woman
told me, very softly that she was gang raped by
smugglers multiple times the end of the two years she
spent confined in a smuggler warehouse in Kufra, released from
the warehouse and dispatched the Tripoli defend for herself. When
she became pregnant, Ofne gave birth to a little girl,
(28:11):
depending on handouts and help from strangers to survive. She
told me that when she decided to attempt the sea
crossing with her daughter, they ended up in another night
marriage smuggler warehouse, where one of the smugglers refused to
find food for her baby unless Afne had sex with him.
Her daughter died when she was seven months old.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
God, oh, what a fucking leak thing.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
Yes, the entire article that that quote was frob is
like a rife with crimes like this.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah, right, is horrific stuff.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
I'll make sure that it's in the notes below if
you would want to read that. Yeah, and absolutely no
shame with people don't want to read.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
This because it is fucked Yeah, yeah, you didn't have
to expose yourself to all this. You don't have to
know every detail of it to care about people like,
it's okay not to read it.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
Yeah, ah, so I want to close this particular censu
budget brutally driving this point home. But like women and
teenage girls are being raped to death over there on
a systemic level. Yeah, and I'm fucking disgusted with the
fact that the EU is still sending money there that
(29:26):
is indirectly facilitating this.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Yeah, I've mean fucking well, it gets on it's high
horse about like gender and quality and women's rights and
such things, and then like unless it's the inconvenient gender
equality of migrants, right, or that the rights of migrants.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
Which yeah, I need a cigarette now.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Fuck.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
It's the fucking worst thing that I deal with talking
to people about work. It's like people who have survived
sexual violence, or like people who can reasonably expect to
encounter it and making this journey because they think that
it's there only option anyway.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Yeah, It's it's not that people who undertake this journey
to a batel life that they once are unaware of
the risks. It's despite the risks that they're just doing it.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Yeah, that's the same in the Americas, Rightly, people understand
that the you know, I mentioned this in my Darien
Gap episode, but very young children are subject to sexual violence,
which also sometimes results in their death. Yeah, and like
they understand that that world is at such an exaggerated
level of inequality that people are willing to take those
(30:34):
risks because that's the way the only way that they
feel they can secure a safe future for their children.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
Yeah. It is a level of courage that I cannot fathom. Yeah,
me need that. The best I could do was just
acknowledge that I can't fathom it. But that's also like
a very bitter built to swallow.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Yeah, it is like I uh, you know, I attend
wars for work sometimes. And the women who take on
the migration, especially when not that men are not so
back to sexual violence, say ah, but it's probably more
likely for women to experience it. The women who take
on the migration journey alone or with their children, like
those people's bravery, Like I can't fathom being that brave.
(31:15):
I can't imagine how one can be that courageous a
dedicated to one's child. And we talked in our podcast
recently about Primrose who came with her daughter. Like that's
someone I'm still like just in awe of, you know,
like you don't see that kind of courage and dedication
(31:36):
and just like ability to push through things that are
horrific with this goal in mind of reaching the United States,
Like it's and it continues to be something that I
struggled to find words to express, obviously, but it's really something.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
I want to say.
Speaker 4 (31:54):
Something just speechless, Yeah, not much to say.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Uh, you know who else should be speechless?
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Is it the products and services to support this podcast?
Speaker 2 (32:07):
I sure hope. So just two minutes of silence.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Yeah, hopefully it will just be a little moment for
quiet contemplation for all of you out there.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
All Right, we're back.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
We've we've had a glass of water, and we're going
to keep doing the podcast anyway.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Yes, rehydrates a bit. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
So in terms of like explicit accounts, that was it. Okay, Yeah,
So if someone had to skip over that part, that
part of the episode should be done. You can start
listening again. So as of this recording, They're Missing Migrants Project,
who tracks migrant depths and those who become missing. Between
(32:58):
our quotes, approximately thirty two thousand people are either dead
or missing and presumed death in the Mediterranean that I
have been confirmed Jesus. The overwhelming majority of these people
drowned while attempting the crossing. Two five hundred and eighty
two of these cases were registered in twenty twenty four.
(33:20):
Last year, roughly seventy thousand people attempted a crossing, according
to statistics from the European Commission. This may not appear
as a lot of deaths compared to the crossings, but
this figure does not take into account deaths on the
journey towards the crossing. I was not able to verify
how the number of seventy thousand was made up, as
(33:42):
the EO website I got it from is a collection
of data from different countries and agencies who register it.
What do you think is safe to assume, and let
me emphasize assume here is that people captured by Italian
multice cypriots or Libyan co authorities is included in this number,
(34:04):
so that those are people who've attempted the crossing and
then are taken back to Libya, possibly undertaking the journey again.
Yeah right, because yeah, I know you've stressed this a
few times. But a number one does not mean that
it's just a single person. It can be the same
person who tries to cross multiple times.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
Yeah, right, people will will peak crossings. I think we
reach a point where the numbers are not and not
that every point of these people is a person, right,
But like I would be any less pissed off if
it was fifty thousand.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
Like after a certain amount, it just becomes a number
because we just can can't imagine how many people that is.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
Yeah, Like we shouldn't ever have to conceive the thirty
two thousand people drowning, right, that it's not a thing
that in the twenty first century we should allow to
happen as a society, Like, yeah, this shit, Like, you know,
I've participated meat Day along the border and very familiar
with death at the border, But the scale of this
(35:06):
is unfathomable, even to someone who's spent a decent amount
of time across the migrant trails of the America. Is
that two thousand and five hundred two deaths in a year.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Like that's a small village.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely the other yearly basis, Yeah, it's a
decent size city. If you take that thirty two thousand number.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
Yeah, it's like a mid sized music festival of people
who didn't need to die.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
I checked the websites called info Migrants, and they estimate
that the Libyan Coast Guard alone has returned again. Air
quotes around twenty one thousand migrants are caught during a
crossing attempt, So the vast majority of these people end
up back in the detention centers we discussed earlier, So
(35:53):
that's around one for every three and a half people
being captured.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Jesus. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:01):
There was at some point a video making the rounds,
and it was this African woman on a boat, filmed
with like a mobile phone, and she was just crying
and was just saying like, Hey, if the Libyan Coast
God shows up, I'm jumping overboard. No way am I
going back there.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Yeah, I've seen that.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
That is one of those statements that I will immediately believe.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Yeah, people have self immolated in those detention centers like
Suich just dead misery and their desire for the world
to see them. I guess I can understand why someone
would just rather stop being.
Speaker 4 (36:37):
So the little calculation I just made that leaves us
with forty nine thousand people making the crossing, of which
eighty two diets resulting in forty six thousand, four hundred
people entering Europe through the Libyan roots. Again, these are approximations.
(36:58):
More exact numbers will never know. Yeah. I tried to
track money and expenditures a tiny bit to see how
the EU is dealing with this. It's not one of
my strong suits. I want to be upfront with that.
I was able to find that between twenty twenty and
twenty twenty three, THEE granted at least one hundred and
(37:19):
five million euro under the European Integrated Border Management Assistance Mission.
This is money that is directly going to Libya for
assistance in managing our border. This number does not include
money directly or indirectly given to Libya from individual member
states or from the budget of the EU's Border Agency FRONTACS.
(37:42):
The latter has seen an absolute massive increase in their budgets. Yeah,
from around two hundred and fifty billion in twenty sixteen
to over eight hundred and forty billion in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
God, yeah, that's a vast increase.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
Yes, And what's relatively recently been happening is that rather
than have their own vessels in the sea. They are
using air reconnaissance in the form of drones or other
airborne vehicles spot spot boat boats or thingies with migrants
and then they give that information to the Libyan coast
(38:18):
Guard they can pick them up, right. And this is
where the EU is I would say, directly complicit in
like the abuse that that that's happening in Libya.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah, I think that's a perfectly reasonable thing to say.
Speaker 4 (38:32):
Because we know what it is likely to certainly going
to happen to the people that are picked up by
the Libyan coast Guard.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
And if you're saying that Haley beIN coasted Alcaemy pick
up these people, you know what's going to happen to
those people, like and it's not good. And they keep
doing it despite it being more than a decade of
evidence at this point abusive migrants.
Speaker 4 (38:55):
Italy, in particular, as the country receives a lot of
migrants from metaty Iranian crossings, is keen on helping Libya
in terms of training, material and funding additional agreements between
the two countries. At another uncomfortable light on the dynamic,
there was first the EU Libya slash Italy Libya Memorandum
of Understanding signed in twenty seventeen. It saw an enhanced
(39:21):
enhancement of military insecurity related to trying to prevent migrants
from making a crossing advertently or inadvertently trying to make
Libya their final stop and trap them there under the
conditions that we just discussed. That agreement is a continuation
of the Treaty on Friendship, Partnership and Corporation that was
(39:42):
signed by Libya and Italy back in twenty eighth which
described the corporation in detail visv combating illegal migration from
Libya to the EU. We also have the Multi Declaration
from twenty seventeen which only strengthened unbacked governmental organs within
the EU, as well as a commitment to further assist
(40:04):
Libya in training, in providing funding and technical assistance. Those
are the main purposes of disagreements, which is to prevent
people from passing the prestigious gates of Fortress Europe because politically,
we'd rather add them to the mortar with which those
walls are built.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
Jesus.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
And it is these conditions that Washington Ghules thought would
be a suitable place to send migrants to who do
not speak the language know the people have legal representation
or assumably even have the money to do anything. We've
barely spoken of the civil war that is still going
on there, Yeah, with like fighting in the capital of
(40:43):
Troopoli happened like two weeks ago. We haven't spoken about
any legal or law related issues that these people would
invariably run into were they to be deported to Libya.
It's the umpteen for example, of colonialism, military and from states,
war wandering, and the transfer of problems to another place
(41:04):
or to another generation. Very much like climate change, actions
such as these will have immense direct and ripple effects
that our children, anchorant children will learn the consequences of.
And the last bit I've added because let's hope that
no one is going to be sent Olivia from the States.
(41:26):
But I can very much imagine that those people will
face the same horrors that they will have to create
their own little communities just to be able to get by. Yeah,
I can imagine some people might might run into ISIS
over there and become radicalized. We could also get like
(41:47):
small pockets of people who just write a survived but
are still stuck there and grow resentment there is no
real way to estimate what the consequences are going to
be of deporting pepeople there other than that like the
cruelty is happening that Washington rules are aiming for.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
I think that the point is to hurt these people
as much as possible at the moment, and then there
isn't really much of a long term thought process beyond that. Like,
I guess I would like to say that people were
enraged at the thought of the United States sending migrants
to Liby, and they should be. I'm glad that they were,
but they should also be in rage at the reality
of the European Union doing it every single day. Yes,
(42:32):
way more than twelve people, and like you should care
about that too, especially if you're in Europe, Like you know,
obviously I am a person from Europe. I think it's easy,
like for people to get this kind of smug social
democracy kind of like, oh, look at the Americans, they're
so fucked up. Not saying things aren't fucked up here,
they are, but like the EU is doing some fucked
(42:53):
up shit to migrants, and like people in Europe should
be in the streets about that too.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
Definitely, like this is just the biggest of all the issues.
But there's also abuses and human rights violations happening in
the Balkans for the people who take that crossing, there's
people who try to cross from a Rocco to Spain. Yeah,
who also encounter again, not as bad as the things
we just talked about, but by no means it's good.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah, definitely shouldn't be happening.
Speaker 4 (43:23):
I don't even want to use words like good or
bad because like they tend to lose all meaning. Yeah,
like less bad doesn't necessarily mean good.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Yeah, that's really doesn't.
Speaker 4 (43:33):
It means less worse. And yeah, there are there are
places to make that crossing that are less worse than Libya.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
But still, yeah, that doesn't mean any of it is desirable, yeah,
or like that we should accept any of it.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
No, No, people should be fucking mad about all of this.
Speaker 4 (43:50):
And I also I would like to have to go
back a little bit about what you said about like
this buck European the social democracy. Yeah, like that's definitely
attitude that's not uncommon among Europeans. But then again, we
very often fail to look into our own backyards. And
(44:10):
also Europe just tends to be politically a few years
behind the US, but we've also seen a rise in
autocratic regimes like Victor Orbonn Yeah, massive example. Maloney in
Italy is another one. But also in my own country
(44:31):
of the Netherlands, they try to bypass parliament in order
to make an emergency law to make sure that migrants
wouldn't enter the Netherlands, and as we speak, they're threatening
to stop the government formation if no stricter measures against
migrants are being taken.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (44:50):
So it's these little seeds of autocracy that are almost
more worrying because it's these little step that happened and
before you know it, things are getting worse quick.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
Like, anyone who pays attention to the US can see
that the vehicle on which fascism was delivered to us
is being delivered to us in a better way of saying,
it is anti micro sentiment, right, Like that is how
this country built the toolkit that is now being used.
(45:26):
And you know, the rest of the world should pay
attention to that, I hope.
Speaker 4 (45:30):
Yeah, we should see it as a warning sign, not
as a manual.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Yeah. That's a good weapon, it.
Speaker 4 (45:37):
Yeah, Unfortunately it's being used as a manual by certain
European governments.
Speaker 3 (45:41):
Yeah, so thank you for sharing that traumatic piece for
reporting with I think that's that's rough.
Speaker 4 (45:50):
I would say you're welcome if it wasn't a fucking
grim to say that at the end of all that.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (45:57):
No, I'm happy that I read a lot and put together.
I'm also going to have to find a puppy and
cuddle the puppy for a few hours.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Yeah. So yeah, that's all I have for now. Great, Yeah,
that's all I got to you. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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