In separate accounts at this refugee camp, they said they
were raided in their homes by soldiers, beaten and robbed of
their savings and identity papers, then detained and finally
offered money to take up arms for the state.
Those who refused were told they would never leave, said
Fergo Fevomoye, a 23-year-old who crossed the border on Sunday.
“They will give you a gun and train you like a soldier. Then
you fight the war of Libya. As I am talking to you now there is
many blacks in training who say they are going to fight this
war. They have prized (paid) them with lots of money.
He said Africans who are first intimidated and stripped of
everything were then offered 250 Libyan dinars ($200) to train
as fighters.
“They said I should take money and fight. They would give me
250 dinars. I said No. When I told them No they told me I would
not go anywhere,” he told Reuters.
The Libyan governemnt has denied using foreign nationals to
fight the rebels, saying instead that dark-skinned Libyans
serving in its security forces had been mistaken for African
mercenaries.
INSTANT “MERCENARIES”
When protests against Gaddafi’s government led to violence
three weeks ago, rebels spread reports that the Libyan leader
had brought in African mercenaries from such states as Chad and
Zimbabwe.
But the suggestion that trained, uniformed troops were being
flown in to help suppress the revolt has not been proven.
The accounts now emerging of how some black migrants are
successfully being forced into taking up arms for the Libyan
state may be one explanation of these reports of black fighters.
Whatever the truth, Nigerian and Ghanians in this transit
camp all say they were suddenly very afraid to show their faces
in the cities of western Libya where they worked, in case they
were taken for mercenaries or dragooned by government troops.
Obinna Obielu, an electrician who had worked in Libya for 12
years and said he had saved 10,000 dollars, escaped with his two
friends and their wives and two babies in an old Land Cruiser.
Obielu said the main road from Zawiyah, 50 km (30 miles)
west of Tripoli was too dangerous, and he had driven through the
bush close to the frontier.
“I go off, because it is not a good road. Because they are
attacking people and sending them back to go and fight in the
war,” he said. “The car is left back there.”
Daniel Chibuzor and Tijanx Sadiki also recounted how they
were raided and robbed at home and left with no papers and no
money for food, terrified of appearing on the streets, before
they decided to risk travelling west to Tunisia.
A baby daughter, Ability, and infant son, Miracle, travelled
with the group. Ability needed treatment at the Tunisian Army’s
mobile hospital for tear-gas inhalation.
Nigerian Ike Emanuel, who made it to the safety of Tunisian
territory last week after burying his six-month-old baby in the
desert, said he had talked to many of the latest arrivals among
his countrymen and heard the same theme: Africans were being
trapped and forced to either fight or flee.
Over 105,000 migrant workers have fled from Libya into
Tunisia in the past 10 days, most of them Egyptians but also
including some 20,000 Bangladeshis. The Egyptians have since
been reptriated by airlift, after making angry protests about
the Cairo government’s alleged inaction.
The Bangladeshis and thousands of west Africans remain in
the United Nations refugee agency’s transit camp, which is being
prepared for a possible influx of refugees the agency fears may
be trapped inside Libya but desperate to escape.
Fergo Fevomoye said it was a sympathetic Libyan policeman
who eventually helped him escape, “because if not I am going to
stay here 20 years, I am going to die here”.
(Editing by Angus MacSwan)
