On the coast outside Tripoli, a squalid refugee camp shelters hundreds of African migrants who found work under Libya’s former regime, but are now jobless, discriminated against and unable to return home.
Squatting in the derelict buildings of what was once a training centre for the ousted Libyan leader’s special forces, they face racist abuse, attacks and robberies as they wait each day, hoping someone will offer them work or bring emergency food handouts. Clothes hang on makeshift washing lines. Piles of rubbish lie everywhere. “Since we came here… we’ve been hoping, praying to God, believing one day maybe help will come from somewhere, because all we had has been taken,” said Anthony, who worked on a building site before the conflict forced him to seek refuge in Sidi Bilal.
“I’ve been beaten and robbed several times, even in the camp here… Sometimes, when we go out onto the streets, people start throwing stones at us because we’re black,” he added. The camp’s 700 residents are mostly young Nigerian men who fled the capital two months ago when it fell to the revolutionary forces that last week crushed the final pockets of resistance by Muammar Gaddafi loyalists. They are a tiny fraction of the number of people displaced by the conflict.
Over 700,000 migrant workers have left Libya since February, according to the International Organisation for Migration, but tens of thousands remain. The Nigerians, the largest migrant community in Tripoli, found casual work before the city fell, washing cars or labouring on farms and building sites, jobs shunned by most Libyans. But with many locals angered by claims that sub-Saharan mercenaries supported Gaddafi’s regime, they now face hostility in their host nation. “It is a problem having the Africans here,” said Adil, one of the camp’s security guards.
“It’s not healthy. They don’t eat good food, they fight each other, and some of them came without passports, bringing diseases with them, only to cross into Europe,” he said. “The best solution is to send them back to their country,” added the former fighter from Zawiyah. Most of the camp’s residents say they plan to return home following Gaddafi’s ouster, because they no longer feel safe.
But without cash or passports – Nigeria does not have a consular representative in Tripoli – they are currently unable to do so, stuck in a limbo with no way forward or backwards. “Some of them don’t want to go back. They’ve risked everything to make it this far,” said Jeremy Haslam, the IOM’s chief of mission in Libya. “But there are others who are eager to return, and they are desperately hoping that their temporary travels permits will be issued soon.”
There are growing concerns among the humanitarian community that Libya’s immigration policy will be tightened by the National Transitional Council. The new regime is already believed to be restricting aid to the camp, fearing that it may become a permanent settlement. “We believe that since Libya is free from the past government, it should be a free Libya for everyone,” said Anthony, one of the few residents who plans to tough it out. But most in the camp see no future for themselves in the new Libya.
