We were in a detention centre for migrants in Tripoli and we came to a big locked door. It was impressively bolted and padlocked. Someone murmured that we didn’t have time to look inside. But I felt somehow obliged to do so.
Outside in the sun I had already said hello to about 100 migrants — almost all of them from West Africa: Guinea-Conakry and Nigeria. They were sitting on the concrete in rows, their heads in their hands; the men in one group, and about half a dozen women a little way off. They had been here for months, in some cases, and they wanted to go home.
Kwasi Kwarteng and Kim Sengupta consider the future of Libya:
‘J’ai faim,’ said one of the men. ‘C’est pas bon ici,’ said another. When I said that I was the British Foreign Secretary they cheered and clapped, because it is UK cash that is helping them to find a way out. It is (at least partly) thanks to UK taxpayers that this group were about to be put on buses and taken to the airport.
As they told me, they had first intended to go to western Europe. Their plan had been to get to ‘France, Allemagne, Grande-Bretagne’. They had paid people smugglers €1,500 each — a huge sum, more than their annual wage. Then they had been intercepted, detained — or rescued, depending on your point of view — and sent here.
It was thanks to UK investment that this centre seemed at least vaguely hygienic, in spite of the press of humanity. We had been shown the new latrines, and even though they were not yet finished, you could sense that an effort was being made. But now we had come to a series of locked doors, and I felt I had to understand the scale of the problem.
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