30 June 2020 — Statewatch
Statewatch News Online, 30 June 2020
e-mail: office@statewatch.org
London, 29 June 2020 – The civil liberties organisation Statewatch has today delivered an open letter [1] with hundreds of signatories to Mr Kitack Lim, Secretary-General of International Maritime Organization (IMO), calling on him to revoke the Libyan maritime search and rescue (SAR) zone [2] in order to prevent the so-called Libyan Coast Guard undertaking ‘pull-backs’ of migrants to Libya, where they face violence, abuse and mistreatment.
In August 2018, the international press reported on a massive exodus of Venezuelans fleeing the famine and chavist dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro. There were 18,000 to cross the border each day. At the time, the UN predicted that there would be 5.3 million Venezuelan migrants and refugeesthroughout Latin America by the end of 2019. There was a major crisis.
