Children ran screaming through the streets as bullets flew through the air when the camp on the outskirts of the Libyan capital came under attack from the brigades that ousted and killed Moamer Qadhafi last year. The residents of the camp come from Tawargha, close to the Mediterranean coast, and are darker skinned than most other Libyans. They are now paying the price of being seen as Qadhafi supporters.
"We had to grab the children and carry them in our arms because they were beside themselves with fear," says Hawa Ali Youssef. When the 40-year-old woman mentions her brothers her voice falters and she begins to cry. Two died in the attack, while other members of her wider family remain missing. She says she does not know whether they are alive or dead as she lowers her head onto the threadbare carpet on the floor of the hut that is now her home.
This is the fate of many of those driven out of Tawargha, which was once home to up to 40,000 people but is now virtually a ghost town, its ruined buildings sticking up out of the sand. Tawargha is near the coastal city of Misurata, a rebel stronghold that came under sustained attack from Qadhafi loyalists during the war.
Its former residents are seen as traitors guilty of crimes like random killings and rape during last year's war. The details of what actually took place remain obscure to officials of the United Nations and aid organisations. Condemned to desolate camps on the sandy outskirts of the capital they live in fear.
Hawa Ali Youssef lives with her husband, their three little girls and a son in a room measuring just two by three metres in a hut made of fibreboard. There is a single cardboard box in the corner. A pile of mattresses lies on a bunk bed ready for laying out for the night. "We never did anyone any harm," she says.
An official with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees describes the plight of the camp's residents. "Many are traumatised. They need assistance," she says. While they are allowed to leave the huts and sand of the camp, the route leads over a dirt road into an area containing unfinished tower blocks started under Qadhafi and then to one of the main roads leading into Tripoli.
"The people here are frightened that they will be attacked out there," the UN official says. An elderly man approaches the party inspecting the camp, breaking down in tears. Another sits disconsolate against the wall of a hut. Faras Muhamed says he is 66 but looks considerably older. He opens his shirt to reveal wounds that are the marks of torture according to those standing nearby.
Suddenly a dozen women in brightly coloured robes with a horde of children surround the visiting party. They all want to tell their story. "A brigade came one evening," says Khadija Ramadan Mahmud, a dignified woman of 70, who recounts how her son was taken away.
"They held a knife to his throat and took him with them," she says. That was five months ago. "Where's my son? I don't know where he is." A UNHCR official confirms that armed men on pickup trucks have entered the camp more than once to terrorise the 2,000 or so residents, separating the men from the women and hauling men off to a prison camp in Misurata. "What has happened to them is often unclear," he says.
The residents of the camp feel that they have fallen victim to racism. Many of them insist they want to return to their homes in Tawargha as soon as possible. Among the party visiting the camp are Barbara Lochbihler, a senior human rights official with the European Parliament and a member of Germany's Greens party, and Greens party co-leader Claudia Roth.
"The European Union was part of the war," a resident of the camp tells them. "Now the EU must be part of the solution," he insists, adding that he and the others have been forgotten. The residents feel they are suffering for the Nato air attacks that helped the rebels topple the Qadhafi regime. The European politicians are keen to ascertain what has happened to those taken away and how much truth there is in the allegations made against the people of Tawargha.
This remains a near-impossible task in a country still partially controlled by the militias and where there is no representative government as yet. As night falls gunshots can be heard from Tripoli in what has become routine, some of the bullets even reaching the camp.
Comments
Comments are closed.