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Incident

Aid effort for thousands at Libyan border advances

04 March 2011 18:40 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. The torrent of refugees fleeing Libya has suddenly slowed, U.N. officials said Friday, as an international effort to shelter and repatriate thousands still stranded on the Tunisian side of the border picked up speed, APA reports quoting â€œAssociated Pressâ€.
U.N. officials said security forces of Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi are stepping up threats and intimidation of foreign workers trying to flee. Many of those laborers who reached neighboring Tunisia said they had been robbed by Libyan security forces and by ordinary Libyans. They said they were stopped at checkpoints and were ordered to hand over cash and cell phone memory cards.
A Tunisian aid official said border traffic was slow Friday because fewer Libyan border officials were at work on the Muslim day of rest, although many people are waiting in Libyan villages near the border and will attempt to cross Saturday.
An international aid effort is under way at the chaotic Libyan-Tunisian frontier, where about 17,000 people who fled Libya are being housed until they can catch flights to their home countries, said Goran Stojanovski of the U.N.’s refugee agency.
A single-file line of men â€” mostly Bangladeshis who had menial jobs in Libya â€” trudged with belongings balanced on their heads for seven kilometers (four miles). Led by Tunisian officers, they made their way from the trash-strewn border crossing, where thousands spent the night on the ground and in makeshift shelters, to a nearby transit camp and the promise of improved conditions.
More than 200,000 people have fled to neighboring Tunisia, Egypt and Niger since Feb. 15, when the uprising against Gadhafi began, and some have reported intimidation and having to pay huge sums of money to get to the border.
Many of those who made it across more recently told The Associated Press that they had been robbed of money and cell phones by Libyan soldiers, police and civilians as they escaped.
"Many people appear to be frightened and are unwilling to speak," said agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming in Geneva, Switzerland. "They feel hunted and targeted."
In the last 24 hours, fewer than 2,000 people made it to Tunisia, compared with 10,000 to 15,000 in previous days, she said, linking the drop to Gadhafi forces trying to choke off the flow.
"The security situation in Libya may be preventing people from fleeing," Fleming said. "If (the Libyan) military control of the border and roads reduces, a huge exodus of people could resume."
Monji Slim, head of the Red Crescent in southern Tunisia, said this slowdown is largely due to the fact that fewer Libyan border officials are at work Friday, the Muslim day of rest.
He said he was told that thousands of foreign workers are waiting in Libyan villages near the border and are expected to attempt the crossing Saturday.
Some Africans crossing the border had bitter tales of harsh treatment by both pro- and anti-Gadhafi Libyans, with the rebels fearing they were mercenaries hired by Gadhafi to defend his regime. Some Eritreans said they were stopped 20 times, robbed of their money and all their belongings.
At another Egyptian crossing, 40 West Africans "paid a human smuggler to take them to Egypt in a sealed and refrigerated truck," said Jemini Pandya, spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration.
In Tunisia, evacuations picked up for Egyptians and other foreigners. British, French and U.N. planes were taking turns getting Egyptian workers to Cairo. France was preparing to evacuate 5,000 Egyptians who arrived in Tunisia by air and boat. Egypt itself has repatriated tens of thousands of citizens.
The U.N. was also evacuating 3,100 Egyptians from the Tunisian port of Djerba to Cairo.
The International Organization for Migration was organizing two flights to take the increasing number of Bangladeshis from the Tunisian capital of Tunis back to Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. One of its ships also arrived in the port of Alexandria, Egypt, on Friday, carrying 1,450 Egyptian migrant workers from Sfax in Tunisia.
Two U.S. C-130 transport aircraft left Ramstein Air Base in Germany early Friday, stopped in Pisa, Italy, to pick up supplies of plastic water containers, blankets and plastic sheeting from a USAID warehouse, and then headed for the Libya-Tunisia border region to deliver the humanitarian aid, the U.S. African Command said.
U.N. officials running the camp along with the Tunisian military said more than 500 metric tons of humanitarian supplies like tents, blankets and generators arrived in recent days, Stojanovski said. Tunisian volunteers handed out food and drinks.
Tarek Ben-Ali of the International Organization of Migration said that more than 105,000 people have crossed into Tunisia since the Libyan unrest began.
Newcomers were arriving at the camp as others were taken to the airport in Djerba and repatriated. Ben-Ali said 70 flights had left Thursday and 23 were planned for Friday, all but two of them for Egyptians.
Many people who said their phones were stolen were lined up to get free three-minute phone calls from the aid group Telecommunications without Borders. Others line up for a lunch of bread, yogurt and water.
Vietnamese, Chinese, and Egyptians were leaving the camp at a steady pace, but Bangladeshis faced a serious language problem as they spoke very little Arabic, French or English.
They all told the same story: they did not get paid by their employers and were robbed by Libyan police of money and cell phones. They blamed their government for not working to expedite their departure.
When a Bangladeshi diplomat visited the camp Friday, he was mobbed by several hundred angry countrymen demanding assistance. As the diplomat read out the names of those slated to be on upcoming flights, Tunisian soldiers nearby were going through a pile of passports, registering names.
Those slated for the two daily flights to Bangladesh from Djerba were made to wait in groups of several hundred beside a road.
Those who have been at the camp longest were given priority to board the buses, but the system broke down and the bus was swarmed by those trying to board.
Andrew Mitchell, the British secretary of state for International Development, said at the camp that more people were thought to be still inside Libya en route to Tunisia.
"At the moment what we have here is not so much a humanitarian crisis, as difficult as the situation is, it is a logistical crisis, and the key is that we address those logistical constraints," he said.
In Libya, two more flights were planned Friday to start evacuating 10,000 Bangladeshis.