http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/migrants-being-raped-shot-and-tortured-on-desperate-journeys-to-europe-doctor-reveals-10457130.html
Migrants being raped, shot and tortured on desperate journeys to
Europe, doctor reveals
Doctors said migrants go untreated for horrific injuries for weeks and
months while in the hands of ruthless smugglers
Lizzie Dearden
'It feels like working in a warzone,' a doctor working in Italy said
Lizzie Dearden
Saturday 15 August 2015
Migrants are being raped, shot and tortured during their desperate
journeys to Europe even before they risk their lives crossing the
Mediterranean, a doctor has revealed.
Anna Crepet, who works for medical charity Doctors Without Borders
(MSF), said treating the thousands of men, women and children arriving
in Italy feels “like working in a warzone”.
Speaking in the Sicilian port of Pozzallo, where MSF medics work at
boat landings and in reception centres, she told The Independent most
migrants go untreated for potentially fatal injuries until they reach
safety. Anna Crepet, an MSF doctor, said treating migrants was like
'working in a warzone'
“Sometimes it feels like we’re working in a warzone but here I think
it’s even worse, because we see injuries that haven’t been treated for
weeks,” Dr Crepet said.
“We see lots of fractures through beating, lots of gunshot wounds. We
find bullets in muscles and under the skin.”
She recounted how one man arrived in Sicily with a hole through one
thigh where a bullet had passed through and become embedded in his
other leg.
But some injuries are harder to spot. Dr Crepet said almost all women
who make the journey from their homes in Africa or the Middle East are
raped along the way, often arriving several months pregnant.
“They tend to say very little about what they've been through but
sometimes we see scars and wounds from rape,” she said.
“We know that most of the women who come here alone must have been
raped - and a lot of women arrive on their own."
Dr Crepet likened some of the stories she had heard to torture,
telling of migrants being gang-raped in front of their loved ones by
their captors in Libya.
“Men or women, it doesn't matter,” she said. “We've seen 13-year-olds
who have been raped."
Many migrants tell doctors similar stories of being kidnapped, held
hostage and beaten in Libya by gangs demanding money.
But even before they get to the lawless country, where most smugglers’
boats are launched towards Italy, people coming from sub-Saharan
Africa or the Middle East are driven for weeks through the desert in
overcrowded pick-up trucks. Migrants sit on the open cargo of pick-up
trucks, holding wooden sticks tied to the vehicle to avoid falling
from it, as they leave the outskirts of Agadez for Libya (AFP)
Dr Crepet said the Sahara was “one of the deadliest parts of the
journey”, with many migrants being murdered or dying in car accidents
or of dehydration.
She met one Eritrean man with an amputated leg who was run over when
he fell out of an open lorry and could not stand back up on the sand.
He survived and was treated for his severe injuries in Sicily but many
others are lost, often with their deaths going unreported.
A 17-year-old Palestinian boy who journeyed to Italy from Gaza earlier
this year told Save the Children workers how three people thrown off
the truck he was in were left behind to die in the desert.
“They gave us water to drink out of a can but it was mixed with
petrol,” Yusuf said. “We were allowed to eat once a day…some people
died during this trip from hunger and thirst.”
Yusuf, 17, saw people die of starvation on the journey from Sudan to Libya
Another teenager, from Somalia, told the charity how he travelled
through the desert with women who were raped and forced to perform sex
acts on smugglers as they drove.
“One of the women who was raped was seven months pregnant,” Ismail said.
“When she came back to the group took a scarf and tried to strangle
herself but luckily we stopped her.”
When he reached Libya, he and other migrants were kidnapped by
uniformed men and imprisoned in an apartment until they paid an extra
$300 (£200).
“We weren't able to speak amongst ourselves and we were constantly
beaten without any motive,” he said. The teenager was held for a month
before his mother wired the money they demanded.
Dr Crepet said injured migrants in Libya are too afraid of going to
hospitals because of rumours that they will be killed or handed over
to police and militias.
African immigrants gather outside a building used as a shelter at
Janzur Port just outside Tripoli
“The people we see are survivors but many wouldn't survive because you
need to be really robust and strong to be able to get through the
desert, get through Libya and then get on a boat and be at sea with no
leg or a bad injury, stuck for days on a boat,” she added.
“I’m always amazed to see how they survived but we don’t know how many
have died along the way.
“In Libya they’re not treated like human beings, they’re treated like
animals. There is a word in Arabic that the smugglers use, they call
the migrants beasts.”
Dr Crepet treated one man with gashes on his arms who had been slashed
by smugglers using him as an “example” of what would happen to other
migrants if they did not pay up.
More than 200 migrants died when a boat capsized off the coast of
Libya on 5 August
She has been working in Pozzallo since January and was previously
based with MSF in the nearby port of Augusta.
Dr Crepet, who is Italian but trained at the London School of Hygiene
and Tropical Medicine and has worked at several NHS hospitals,
estimated that she must have treated thousands of migrants.
She is one of dozens of MSF doctors stationed in Sicily checking
people as they arrive in ports, then at reception centres and clinics,
as well as educating them about infection control and hygiene.
The medic described her job as “intense” and extremely demanding, both
emotionally and professionally, while overcoming language barriers and
cultural differences.
“But the people you treat are amazing patients, they’re the best I
could have,” Dr Crepet said.
MSF also has three boats helping search efforts in the Mediterranean,
including one that rescued more than 200 people on Saturday.
A record number of migrants are expected to cross the sea to reach
Europe this year and at least 2,000 have died making the voyage so
far.
Received on Sat Aug 15 2015 - 17:12:48 EDT