Libyan authorities accuse aid organizations of planning to change the country’s racial makeup by encouraging African immigrants to stay there and ordering them to close their offices.
Ten groups were picked out – including doctors without borders, the United Nations Refugee Agency and the Norwegian Refugee Commission.
“The plan to address immigration to African origin in our country represents a hostile act. It aims to change the population composition of the country and threaten the balance of Libyan society,” said Salem Gheit, spokesman for the Internal Security Agency.
It responded to a similar announcement from Tunisia two years ago, which was quickly condemned as anti-Black racism.
Both countries sit on the Mediterranean coast and are a key crossing point for African immigrants across the sea to Europe.
Since the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the government has collapsed, allowing armed militias and human traffickers to spread.
The country has been divided into two, each operated by a competitor government.
The militia were accused of running a detention centre where migrants were beaten to death or starved, and the Libyan Coast Guard was accused of sometimes filming people in the sea rather than rescuing them. Libyan authorities have not commented on the allegations.
Thursday’s order to expel aid organizations was established by an internationally recognized government in the capital Tripoli.
“Aren’t they Africans themselves?”
A week ago, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) suspended their work in Libya, describing the harassment campaign by Libyan authorities to “summon and interrogate staff from international NGOs” since mid-March.
“Our organization is very concerned about the consequences of these orders on the health of patients and the safety of humanitarian workers,” MSF said in a statement sent to the BBC.
In response to Thursday’s announcement, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) defended its work, telling the BBC that the people it helped were not “immigrants” but refugees in desperate need.
It also said that it operates with the consent of the Tripoli government.
Spokesperson William William Spindler told the BBC: “We are engaging with Libyan authorities and following up with them for clarity. UNHCR has operated in Libya for more than 30 years and provides humanitarian assistance to refugees, asylum seekers and vulnerable Libyan communities.”
One of the allegations raised by the Libyan International Security Administration against 10 aid organizations is that they support “illegal immigration by providing them with food, clothing and medicine, which encourages these immigrants to consider Libya the ultimate destination, not the country of transit”. But many say they don’t want to stay in the country.
Over the years, sub-Saharan African immigrants have suffered serious rights violations and dehumanized treatment in Libya, including being killed, enslaved or repeatedly raped.
“He used to call me a ‘disgusting black man’. He raped me and said, ‘It’s the purpose of women,'” a Sudanese refugee who trafficked in Libya told the BBC this year that he provided a man with a job cleaning the house.
“Even the kids here are mean to us, they see us as beasts and wizards, they insult us as blacks and Africans, are they not Africans themselves?”
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