Maybe you already know about this. It was news to me. Since 2015 the same E.C. that funds this project and NGI has been financing Libya to go into international waters, capture refugee boats, take them back to Libya then detain them in prisons that are unspeakably horrible, and often torture the men and rape the women.
This is a long piece and it might be behind a paywall, but it reveals a very ugly truth about how African refugees, many fleeing climate change, are kept out of Europe. I don’t usually cry when I read stories about current events. I did this time.
The EC funds pretty much all the equipment the Libyan “Coast Guard” needs to go into international waters, find and capture refugee boats, return them to Libya where they are detained indefinitely in concrete rooms with 3 people per square meter, no restroom facilities and no ventilation. The conditions are by themselves a form of torture, though they make sure that the other forms are used as well.
Very sad and not surprising, unfortunately. It seems that the more ‘public’ crises we end up when boats sink in the Mediteranean or people are trapped through the winter at the Polish borders are only the tip of the iceberg.