Coordination with International Organization for MigrationOn Monday, the Libyan authorities returned 161 Nigerian migrants, including 75 women and six children, to their country as part of a voluntary return programme.
While sitting in the waiting room at Mitiga airport, the migrants received food and drink provided to them by the International Organization for Migration before boarding the plane.
“We will not bear the responsibility for illegal immigration ourselves,” the interior minister of the recognized Libyan government, Imad Trabelsi, told the media, without the help of the international community.
He added, “We will not enable any foreigner to stay in Libya except in a legal manner,” that is, if he was “studying” or engaged in “activity” and entered “in an official manner.”
He explained that among the group of Nigerian immigrants who “will be deported” there are “102 who were arrested at the Libyan-Tunisian border while trying to enter Tunisia or from Tunisia to Libya.”
On August 10, Tunisia and Libya announced that they had agreed to shelter migrants from sub-Saharan African countries, who had been stuck at the border between the two countries for nearly a month after the Tunisian police took them there, according to several testimonies, non-governmental organizations and UN agencies.
The Tunisian security forces “expelled” at least two thousand people from sub-Saharan African countries, who were left in isolated desert areas at the border between Algeria and Libya.
At least 27 of them have died and 73 are missing.
Counselor of the Nigerian Embassy in Tripoli, Samuel Okyere, confirmed that the 161 migrants were “not forced” to return to Nigeria.
“We explained to them that immigration is not bad in itself, but they cannot come to another country without respecting the procedures,” he said.
On 20 June, 165 Nigerians were repatriated under the Voluntary Repatriation Programme.
There are more than 600,000 migrants in Libya, who were intercepted or rescued in the Mediterranean Sea while crossing to Europe. They are taken to detention centers where conditions are often poor, according to NGOs.
Others are sometimes arrested for begging or while raiding illegal immigrants’ hideouts.
Libya has been in utter chaos since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011, and has become a hub for tens of thousands of migrants seeking to reach Europe illegally by sea.
France 24/Reuters
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2023-08-22 05:49:12
