Stefano Montesi/Demotix. All rights reserved.

Libya to Italy in search of freedom

Besieged by civil war, poverty and violent repression, huge numbers of people are risking their lives making the hazardous journey from Tripoli or Benghazi across the Mediterranean to Italy. Crammed into unsafe, poorly maintained vessels, thousands of vulnerable men, women and children are leaving their homes in search of peace, freedom and opportunity.

They come from countries in turmoil: Syria, Eritrea and Ethiopia, Somalia and Libya among others; they have lost hope of life becoming peaceful and just in their homeland, and see no alternative but to pack a bag with their past and set off into the unknown. They are scared to leave and terrified to stay.

There is no functioning state in Libya; armed militia patrol the streets and the Islamic State or Da‘esh are increasing their presence in the country. Around half a million people wait in Tripoli for a boat to Europe, nationless and ‘illegal’; they are vulnerable to a range of dangers in various uniforms.

Sekou Balde from Senegal told The Telegraph “he was stabbed six times, by a gang of four Libyan soldiers who demanded money after they raided the house near Tripoli. ‘My brother was shot dead in front of me—boom, boom—as well as two of my friends,’ he said.”

Thousands of people arriving in Libya are held in ‘migrant detention centers’, run by the Department for Combating Illegal Migration. Between 1,000 and 6,000 inmates are kept in each of the 19 centers, where violent abuse and mistreatment is commonplace.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) report that in these prison-like places, guards have "tortured and otherwise abused migrants and asylum seekers, including with severe whippings, beatings, and electric shocks.” Bribes of anything up to $1,000 for release are commonplace.

Nightmare journeys

The journey to a new peaceful life is protracted and unmapped, with no guarantee of safely arriving on Europe’s shores, let alone being welcomed. Over the weekend of 14 February, 2,600 people were rescued in the Mediterranean off the Italian island of Lampedusa, near where 360 had died last October. The crossing is said to be the most dangerous in the world: 1,700 people died this year making the journey, and over 3,200 last year. 

Criminal gangs are the agents for the journey: there is no travel itinerary, travel insurance, swanky departure lounges, café’s and friendly cabin crew, just criminal gangs who charge a fortune and will beat and abuse anyone who challenges them. The costs are astronomical—averaging between $5,000 and $10,000—and the routes many and varied.

They walk, these frightened men, women, children, often for miles, often barefoot or in plastic sandals; sleep on the streets or in the bush; travel from country to country. They are unwanted, intimidated and exploited; risking rape, abuse and death; every step perilous, every day pregnant with uncertainty.

After months of grinding hardship following on from years of struggle, homelessness, imprisonment, repression and fear—a boat manned by thugs, a worn out vessel for the drained and degraded. No space to breathe, to rest, no food—even no water. The children cry and are cold and scared, the sea rough and unforgiving, the dark suffocating.

The risks, however great, are no deterrent to those seeking to escape conflict, suppression and hardship. From Syria, where civil war still rages, 24,000 journeyed to Italy in 2014, and in Libya, which is on the verge of imploding, the risks are greater than anything the Mediterranean has to offer.

So too in Eritrea—29,000 left for Italy in 2014—where a lifetime of forced military service for both men and women, poverty, arbitrary detention, torture and repression have driven over 200,000 to flee the country in the past decade—more than 3 percent of the population.

And then there’s Somalia, still in the grip of a civil war that kills civilians, where soldiers rape and abuse women, and almost half the population lives under the shadow of suffocating poverty. And Egypt—another military dictatorship—is suffering the most serious human rights crisis in its history, according to HRW.

Is it any wonder, then, that so many are trying to find sanctity and refuge in Europe? You would have to be crazy to stay!

Prejudice and indifference

The men, women and children making, what are by all standards, nightmare journeys, are not responsible for the poisonous environment that they have been forced to live in. They are innocent people, who are simply trying to find a peaceful place where they can live, prosper and bring up their families. In so doing, they are being exploited and mistreated by criminal traffickers, police and bandits alike.

Leaving the familiarity of home, these desperate people are generically called ‘migrants’. A charged term filled with all manner of hate and prejudice; it denies the individual and tarnishes everyone with the brush of appropriation, the sour stench of suspicion. It is a lazy label of intolerance, which fosters abuse and mistreatment.

The migrant is ‘the other’, the one who wants to take something from us; who will exploit our social systems, pollute or dilute our culture, soil our communities and threaten the safety and sanctity of western democracy. They have become a series of inconvenient statistics for western politicians to hurl at one another and an excuse for right wing prejudice and hatred.

Compassion, tolerance and understanding need to flow unreservedly towards the needy and fragile, not intolerance, paranoia and hate. 

As Pope Francis cried out on the shores of the Mediterranean:

“In this world of globalisation we have fallen into a globalisation of indifference... Forgive us our indifference towards so many brothers and sisters."