Migrants trying to leave from the country of West Mauritania from West Africa say they suffer from brutal, inhuman and degrading treatment at the hands of the European Union security forces.
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Migrants trying to leave from the country of West Mauritania from West Africa say they suffer from brutal and inhuman treatment at the hands of the European Union security forces. Immigrants are trying to make a 700 -miles risky journey to Europe, and every year, thousands die on the road as they gather in flimsy wooden boats.
The European Union is pushing the border forces in Mauritania to prevent immigrants from going to Europe in the first place. Ruth Sherlock from NPR spoke to one young man saying he witnessed the violations directly.
Ruth Sherlock, side Airlines: Abaraman Barry (PH) left Sierra Leone in 2023 with a dream of reaching Europe. Instead, he is now bankrupt, stripping him of his passport and property, which was cut off in North Africa and afflicted him with what he went through.
Abdramane Barry: The place where they take us, there is no, as you know, good food, no water, no medicine. There are many pregnant women there. No. God.
Sherlock: He tells me about his experience in Mauritania after he was arrested and about 80 people trying to ride a smuggled boat. The police put them in a very crowded center there was no space to move.
Barry: This is one, as I say, is more than a prison because the prisoner will give him food three times a day. Water, will bathe. But this place? No, no, no. Nothing is good there.
Sherlock: He says they only survived the rice scraps that were thrown at them in the morning. A liter of water had to be shared between 15 people. Even pregnant women in the group, he says, no additional food has been given. The guards targeted little girls.
Barry: Call them, take them out. Nobody knows where they take them, alone (PH).
Sherlock: Barry’s account is escalating with the testimonies of hundreds of immigrants who have been collected in research over years by Human Rights Watch and published in a report last week.
Lauren Sepert: Unfortunately, we have documented a full range of violations that immigrants faced there.
Sherlock: Lauren Sepert is a researcher in the Refugee Rights and Migrants Department of Human Rights Watch.
Sepert: These violations included arbitrary detention, arbitrary detention, extortion, and even some cases of rape and torture. For several years, while these violations were continuing, the European Union and Spain continued at the bilateral level to use external sources of immigration administration.
Sherlock: It is a similar situation, as you say, to the deals that the European Union made with Libya and Tunisia, where the terrible abuse of migrants is documented by the security forces. The European Commission refused to request the interview, but it participated in a statement saying that this requires allegations of ill -treatment seriously. He said that ensuring the respect of human rights for immigrants, refugees and resorting researchers is one of the basic principles of its work.
Mauritania and the European Union made efforts this year to improve the treatment of immigrants. But Ambraman Barry, 24, from Sierra Leone, says he had not seen any sign.
Barry: These people treat us like animals. no.
Sherlock: Barry and other immigrants from Mauritania were expelled without any legal process. They were pushed to Mali, a state in the war. Now there is in Timbuktu, with clothes on his back only. For NPR, financial journalist Baba Toure (PH) meets Barry in a local market where he was pleading for food and help. It connects me on the phone.
How does it make you feel towards Europe that the European Union is pushing these police to prevent people from coming to Europe?
Barry: This makes me feel that I think these people are not well trained if they are good training trainers, they will not treat a person like this. I am not a criminal. I do not deserve this type of treatment. If not me, all children and pregnant women there, they do not deserve it.
Sherlock: Barry says everything he wants now is to go home. But he was stripped of his money, phone, and passport in Mauritania, he has no idea how he had a trip exceeding 1000 miles to Sierra Leone.
Ruth Sherlock, NPR News.
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