Amanda, an asylum seeker from El Salvador, washes shoes as 16 year-old daughter Merli watches at a makeshift tent camp near the Brownsville-Matamoros International Bridge where they wait in hopes of soon being granted entry into the US in Matamoros, Mexico on May 17. Photo: VCG

 

Campaigners filed a complaint with the UN on Wednesday against Italy over a teenage migrant who was sent back to Libya in 2018 along with other migrants, where he was shot, beaten and subjected to forced labor.

The Global Legal Action Network lodged the case with the UN Human Rights Committee aiming to challenge the practice of EU coastal states like ­Italy engaging commercial ships to return vulnerable people to unsafe locations.

The complaint maintains that Italy and other states have turned private merchant vessels into instruments of so-called refoulement - returning asylum seekers to places where they risk persecution and torture - which is illegal under international law.

The case was filed on behalf of a South Sudanese migrant who now lives in Malta. He was rescued in the Mediterranean with dozens of other migrants on November 7, 2018, but was returned to Libya, where he was subjected to horrific treatment.

The Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Center oversaw the rescue, carried out by Panama-­flagged merchant vessel Nivin, but then asked the ship to coordinate with the Libyan Coast Guard (LYCG).

The LYCG told the Nivin to bring the migrants back to Libya, where the roughly 80 passengers were violently removed from the vessel by Libya security forces, who used tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition after a 10-day standoff.

The claimant was shot in the leg, arbitrarily detained, interrogated, beaten, subjected to forced labor and denied medical treatment for months, according to the complaint.