We should not forget, argues a leading human rights lawyer, how ready the UK was to use Qaddafi’s offices when it came to keeping African migrants and asylum seekers from reaching our shores.
When we listen to our leaders’ vigorous condemnations of the human rights abuses and lack of democracy of Qaddafi’s and other authoritarian regimes in the Mediterranean we would do well to bear in mind how new-founded and limited is their concern for human rights, and how likely it is that they will try to co-opt any new governments in the region to their war against sub-Saharan migrants. For in the past decade, as well as cheerfully returning dozens of suspected Islamists to torture under cover of the flimsiest of diplomatic assurances, Britain and Europe have used Qaddafi and other repressive north African regimes as front men for policies causing thousands of deaths in the Mediterranean and beyond.
Flimsy no torture agreements
The UK has taken the lead in negotiating worthless no-torture agreements designed to secure the return to Libya, Algeria, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia of people representing no threat to the UK, but who were opponents of their own countries’ repressive regimes. Under cover of these agreements, our government has handed people over knowing what their likely fate would be; foreign office officials readily admitted their regimes were torturing states. Where was our government’s concern for human rights then?
The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a Libyan opposition group, has never threatened or committed acts of terrorism or carried out any attacks outside Libya (where it tried to assassinate Qaddafi in 1996). Yet it was proscribed in the UK in 2001, its members and those suspected of membership or association arrested, and attempts were made to deport them to Libya under a no-torture agreement signed in 2007 (and denounced by the courts as not worth the paper it was written on) which many human rights activists believed was part of a deal with Qaddafi. In 1999 similar attempts were made to deport Muslim Brotherhood member Hani Youssef to Mubarak’s Egypt despite the lack of credible assurances against torture.
Controlling borders for Europe
This is the more visible side of the dirty deals done with Qaddafi’s Libya and his autocratic bedfellows in the southern Mediterranean. But the lives of thousands have also been jeopardised or lost by Europe’s cynical arming and equipping of Libya in the war against migration. In its name, in the past five years or so, the Libyan desert has become a place of barbed wire and detention centres – hell-holes, dozens of them, some EU-funded, where refugees from Africa’s conflicts and beyond end up, subject to beatings and extortion, awaiting forcible repatriation.[1] EU governments know that Libya has no refugee law or procedures, that Qaddafi does not recognise any obligations towards refugees and does not admit their existence. Knowing this, they nonetheless sub-contracted to Libya the task of keeping them out of Europe.
The Mediterranean bristles with military hardware, surveillance equipment, naval patrols along the coasts of Libya, funded by the EU and by Italy, ensuring that migrants and refugees who manage to get through the desert to the Libyan coast are unable to get to Europe. Italian naval patrols and the EU’s own border paramilitary force FRONTEX intercept and return to Libya any who evade the coastal patrols to ensure that Europe is not burdened with further asylum seekers. FRONTEX, acting in the name of all Europeans, admits that it does not screen passengers for refugee claims, and neither do the Italians. In our name, our governments discount the basic human rights of the thousands of migrants and refugees seeking protection in Europe – and have relied on Qaddafi as an enforcer in the process.
Now, in all the concern being expressed for the victims of Qaddafi’s violence and for the thousands of north African and sub-Saharan migrant workers caught up in the events, stranded and unable to get home, we can be sure that Europe is not about to open its borders any time soon. As Migreurop points out in its statement on the developments in the southern Mediterranean,[2] a minor ‘influx’ of Tunisians to the Italian island of Lampedusa has sent the EU’s migration managers into crisis mode. We have seen the limits of Europe’s concern for human rights: it stops at the borders of Europe.
The more I enthuse on the insight gained from this piece –Quadaffi as a stooge; the migrants’ stop-cock agent for the EU, the more I wonder why we are not talking of concentrating on stabilising our own nations and Continent at large to uncoil our interests in leaving our countries in drove to the West in the first place. As much as the human rights flawed in favour of the EU via Quadaffi ports, anyone would do the same to protect their own, giving the opportunity We should be looking within us to explore why, with all our own national and continental riches and wealth the West could still play about with our integrity as it is still a FACT that, we are unable to feed let alone sustain our own. Why are we angry on this? Why are we even partaking or generating such discourse to proof how wrong it is for the world’s ‘lawmakers’ to use one of us (every which way they liked) to flog the rest of us? What if the Europeans are at it again like they did in the 18th century; the age of enlightenment missionary crusade to Africa, a result of which meant, we literally rendered ourselves to self-imposed imprisonment in the wealthy and regulated West, to much of our prayers and little reasoning to actually capacity build ourselves in order to compete with them on equal terms. What I am saying is that we should approach this with reason not anger as I detect here – true we should consider Quadaffi’s dual role before deciding how we suppose/oppose international viewpoints in the Libyans’ matter but one thing we should first acknowledge is our inability to organise and effectively manage our own affairs, our countries and our Continent – that’s our deficiency that’s left us feeling vulnerable in all our relationships; national and international; the under-dog at the receiving end, always! Take for instance, how much of the human rights’ observation we are accusing them of flooring do we uphold in our own patch? If people are being killed for having an opposing view or belief and worse even for non-believers; being kidnapped to silence opposing view or what they stand for; children are susceptible to child labour and learning difficulties become familiar and recognisable badge worn by over 40% of our population in 2009 (UNICEF online); many adult Nigerian graduates year on end join the long long-term unemployment queue while fewer adult Nigerians with or without college education gain employment with ease and as for the women job hunters…a different kettle of fish. If these are the norm in our experience, what’s the problem whether or not Human Right is at stake here? We should bring politics home I’d say. Our Continent should labour a little to adopt all the Human Rights humanly possible to such extent that the WESTERN WORLD could actually see that, we merit to be signified as ‘developed’ world too. Our leaders should do the same – starting by the recognition of our Rights as citizens of our nations and of Africa (it’s ours and not belonging to western world tourist!) – our Right to choose who leads us and not continue to say YES when we mean NO! All we end up with is greed-stricken individuals like Quadaffi, Gbagbo, Idi Amin and more, whose Western world counterparts had national interests as pivot for their eccentricity!
The more I enthuse on the insight gained from this piece –Quadaffi as a stooge; the migrants’ stop-cock agent for the EU, the more I wonder why we are not talking of concentrating on stabilising our own nations and Continent at large to uncoil our interests in leaving our countries in drove to the West in the first place. As much as the human rights flawed in favour of the EU via Quadaffi ports, anyone would do the same to protect their own, giving the opportunity We should be looking within us to explore why, with all our own national and continental riches and wealth the West could still play about with our integrity as it is still a FACT that, we are unable to feed let alone sustain our own. Why are we angry on this? Why are we even partaking or generating such discourse to proof how wrong it is for the world’s ‘lawmakers’ to use one of us (every which way they liked) to flog the rest of us? What if the Europeans are at it again like they did in the 18th century; the age of enlightenment missionary crusade to Africa, a result of which meant, we literally rendered ourselves to self-imposed imprisonment in the wealthy and regulated West, to much of our prayers and little reasoning to actually capacity build ourselves in order to compete with them on equal terms. What I am saying is that we should approach this with reason not anger as I detect here – true we should consider Quadaffi’s dual role before deciding how we suppose/oppose international viewpoints in the Libyans’ matter but one thing we should first acknowledge is our inability to organise and effectively manage our own affairs, our countries and our Continent – that’s our deficiency that’s left us feeling vulnerable in all our relationships; national and international; the under-dog at the receiving end, always! Take for instance, how much of the human rights’ observation we are accusing them of flooring do we uphold in our own patch? If people are being killed for having an opposing view or belief and worse even for non-believers; being kidnapped to silence opposing view or what they stand for; children are susceptible to child labour and learning difficulties become familiar and recognisable badge worn by over 40% of our population in 2009 (UNICEF online); many adult Nigerian graduates year on end join the long long-term unemployment queue while fewer adult Nigerians with or without college education gain employment with ease and as for the women job hunters…a different kettle of fish. If these are the norm in our experience, what’s the problem whether or not Human Right is at stake here? We should bring politics home I’d say. Our Continent should labour a little to adopt all the Human Rights humanly possible to such extent that the WESTERN WORLD could actually see that, we merit to be signified as ‘developed’ world too. Our leaders should do the same – starting by the recognition of our Rights as citizens of our nations and of Africa (it’s ours and not belonging to western world tourist!) – our Right to choose who leads us and not continue to say YES when we mean NO! All we end up with is greed-stricken individuals like Quadaffi, Gbagbo, Idi Amin and more, whose Western world counterparts had national interests as pivot for their eccentricity!