After a perilous journey across the desert, Abdulaziz was locked up in Triq al-Sikka, a grim prison in Tripoli, Libya. Why? Because the EU pays Libyan militias millions of euros to detain anyone deemed a possible migrant to Europe. Like many other similar prisons across Libya, Triq al-Sikka is a place of hunger, disease, beatings, rape, torture and death. Death by starvation, death by beatings, death by execution. And death by suicide.
From the EU’s 2010 compact with Muammar Gaddafi; to its subsequent agreements with militias and warlords after western intervention had shattered Libya; to the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa set up in November 2015 as the Syrian war caused a sharp peak in migrants and panic in European capitals; to the Khartoum Process, which drew in countries in the east of Africa, including Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and South Sudan; to bilateral deals with countries such as Turkey and Niger – the EU has disbursed billions of euros in an effort to persuade non-European countries to act as its immigration police.
In Triq al-Sikka and other detention centres, “acts of murder, enslavement, torture, rape and other inhumane acts are committed against migrants”, observed a damning UN report, “in furtherance of a state policy”. European leaders have long been aware of this, but have chosen to shut their eyes to the reality of their policies, pretending, as British politicians do, that they are moral crusaders challenging the evils of people smugglers.
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