A day of protest will be held on Saturday, against a Memorandum of Understanding signed between Italy and Libya in 2017.
The protest was called for by NGO’s Abolish Frontex, Diritto di Migrare – Diritto di Restare, and Solidarity with Refugees in Libya.
They announced that there will be demonstrations in Barcelona, Berlin, Bern, Brussels, London, Madrid, Milan, Naples, Rome, Zurich, and many other cities to “demand that the Italian government put an end to the shameful and illegitimate Memorandum of Understanding signed with Libya.”
The protests will be held in front of Italian Embassies and Consulates, as they stress that the MoU “violates international laws and human rights”.
In 2012, Italy was condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for having pushed back migrants coming from Libya. Since then, it has been frequently criticised by Amnesty International, and other human rights organisations, including the UN, and the EU.
The document, the NGO’s said, “establishes radical outsourcing of the borders, installing a system of death on the borders and in Libyan concentration camps. Numerous reports highlighting atrocities committed in Libya, financed by this agreement, are well known. Since 2017, 50,000 people in the movement have been pushed back and taken back to these camps after being intercepted and captured by the Libyan Coast Guard.”
Thousands of women, children, and men are trafficked, exploited, arbitrarily detained, tortured, and extorted in Libya.
On arrival in the country, many migrants are kidnapped and kept captive by militias or used by traffickers and smugglers. Migrants living in cities are discriminated against, and face the constant threat of mass arrests and arbitrary incarceration.
Several international reports, as well as thousands of accounts by survivors, have documented the heinous treatment meted out to migrants and refugees in Libya. In November 2021, the UN fact-finding mission in Libya deemed these violations to be crimes against humanity.