Thousands of foreign workers remain stranded in Libya

A human rights group on Wednesday called for the urgent evacuation of thousands of foreign workers, who are stranded along the Libyan-Tunisian border and have been left in destitute conditions as they try to flee the crisis in Libya. African workers appeared to be at greatest risk because of reports of African mercenaries hired by Libyan strongman Moamer Gaddafi to crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said.
The report was issued from Benghazi, Libya's second largest city that is under control of anti-Gaddafi forces. The rights group said the foreign workers are from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe and have been left homeless and penniless by the fighting. They have been stranded in the eastern coastal city of Benghazi and along the western border with Tunisia. "Thousands upon thousands of foreign workers remain stuck in Benghazi, after being forced from their factories and losing their possessions in last week's tumultuous events," Peter Bouckaert, Human Rights Watch's emergencies director, reported from Benghazi.
"The sub-Saharan African workers are in dire need of evacuation because of the threats they face in Libya," he said. The UN said this week that more than 60,000 people have fled Libya to Egypt and another 40,000 people to Tunisia. Others have fled to Niger. But there was no detailed information about the fate of those people. Thousands of people from Europe and Asia had also left Libya. The rights group said volunteers assisting trapped foreigners reported from Benghazi that an estimated 13,500 people from China, Tunisia, Syria, Jordan, Vietnam, and other countries have been evacuated from Benghazi by cruise ships, ferries and military vessels in the past week.
It said ferry crews who helped evacuate foreigners had barred sub- Saharan Africans from boarding because the crews were under instructions to allow aboard only nationals for which the ferries had been chartered. Human Rights Watch said some Africans reported being attacked by Libyan civilians, had not been paid by their employers and had lost possessions in the violence. It said Benghazi's rebel authorities provided housing for thousands of non-African migrants at a former factory at the port. The migrants are from Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, and Pakistan.