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Grave rights abuses 'hit Libya'
10/12/2007 11:41 - (SA)
Paris - As France prepares to host Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi for the first time in more than 30 years on Monday, rights groups warns that grave rights abuses continue to plague the north African country.
Campaigners feared the resumption of trade and diplomatic ties between Tripoli and the West would overshadow a raft of abuses, from torture to the stifling of political dissent, a lack of free speech and the ill-treatment of migrants.
Michel Fournier of Amnesty France charged: "Torture is systematic, ill-treatment common, many people are imprisoned without trial and when there are trials they are far from upholding international standards.
"There is virtually no freedom of association or expression," under a regime which banned all political activity contrary to the principles of Kadhafi's "revolution", ushered in by a 1969 coup d'etat.
Tchernoblaye files suit against Gaddafi
Amnesty International said: "The ordeal of the Bulgarian medics," released in July after eight years in jail on charges of infecting Libyan children with HIV/Adis, "cruelly highlighted the treatment of prisoners in Libya".
The release of the medics, which French President Nicolas Sarkozy's ex-wife Cecilia helped to broker, paved the way for a raft of military and industrial deals with France, and Kadhafi's visit.
A small anti-nuclear association, Tchernoblaye, announced on Sunday that it had filed suit against Gaddafi, demanding he be arrested during his five-day stay in the French capital.
Rights groups, including Human Rights Watch (HRW) which visited Libya two years ago, had recently noted "a few improvements", such as the release in March 2006 of 84 detained members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
But they warned that the situation of political prisoners - whose exact number was unknown - remained deeply worrying.
Libya counts 600 000 legal immigrants
There was also serious concern about the fate of migrants, thousands of whom were detained in the country as they seek passage to southern Europe, and often expelled collectively to their countries of origin.
For a population of 5.3 million, Libya counted at least 600 000 legal immigrants and between one and 1.2 million illegals, according to official statistics.
Fournier charged: "Migrants are systematically hunted down, sent to detention centres, mistreated. This is done with the tacit agreement of European countries, that do not want these migrants on their own soil."
The head of the International Federation of Human Rights leagues (FIDH), Souhayr Belhassen, said: "The country has become a vast detention centre for hundreds of thousands of migrants from Mali, Niger and Eritrea".
Belhassen charged that "the improvement of European Union-Libya relations has been achieved at the expense of these migrants", including via cooperation on border patrols in the Mediterranean.
- AFP
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