Human Rights Watch said the two rival authorities in the eastern and western parts of Libya cracked down on nongovernmental groups, and armed groups and militias continued to commit abuses against Libyans and migrants with impunity.
Human Rights Watch added Thursday in its World Report 2024 that the Libyan Justice Ministry held thousands of people in prolonged detention without trial, in prisons run only nominally by the authorities but effectively controlled by militias, who subjected detainees to inhumane conditions including severe overcrowding, ill-treatment, and torture.
"The Tripoli-based Government of National Unity, in March, outlawed nongovernmental civic groups that failed to comply with overly burdensome registration, administration, and operations regulations, infringing on the right to association and effectively freezing civic work. The rival, eastern-based authorities in February started to enforce an Anti-Cybercrime Law that United Nations experts had called contradictory to the rights of free expression, privacy, and association." The report says.
It adds that immigrants and asylum seekers suffer inhumane conditions, torture, forced labor, and sexual assault in arbitrary and indefinite detention controlled by both eastern and western Interior Ministries or in facilities controlled by smugglers and traffickers.
