Human Rights Watch (HRW) has implicated a drone registered and operated out of Malta by a private company on behalf of the EU border guard agency Frontex in human rights violations, according to an analysis published this week.
The drone, along with five aircraft, was being operated from Malta and collecting information on migrant boats that was then relayed to the Libyan authorities. The Libyan Coast Guard, backed by EU and member state cash, then used it to push back migrants to detention camps where rape, torture, murder, extortion, and slavery have been widely reported.
“Without the information from EU aircraft, the Libyan Coast Guard would not have the technical and operational means to intercept these boats on such a scale,” the report states.
HRW recommended that Frontex should put in place adequate measures to fulfil its obligations in assessing whether activities, including aerial assistance, are violating human rights.
The activity in question occurred throughout 2021, largely from a ground-control station at Malta International Airport. Since that year, over 32,400 people have been captured by Libyan authorities at sea and forcibly returned to the country. HRW reported that a third of these interceptions were made following intelligence gathered by Frontex.
“The use by the EU’s border agency, Frontex, of aerial surveillance to enable the Libyan Coast Guard to intercept migrant boats, knowing that migrants and asylum seekers will face systematic and widespread abuse when forcibly returned to Libya, makes Frontex complicit in the abuse,” Human Rights Watch and Border Forensics said when publishing the research.
“As long as Frontex operations are designed to enable interceptions by Libyan forces, the border agency and the EU should be held accountable for their role in the abuses suffered by people returned to Libya,” they added.
The report concludes that Frontex’s approach is designed “not to rescue people in distress but to prevent them from reaching EU territory.”
(Alice Taylor | Exit.al)
Source: euractiv.com
