African migrant crisis spawns new slave trade

Smugglers rampant in Libya are kidnapping and forcing African migrants into slave markets, where they often are sold repeatedly for ransom and suffer abuse, according to a new report from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Traffickers mostly capture the African migrants as they travel north toward Libya to board boats headed for Europe.

IOM spoke with trafficking survivors who said slave traders sold the migrants in squares and garages in southern Libya. The report reveals how widespread the slave market is becoming, especially in the country’s south.

“Selling human beings is becoming a trend among smugglers as the smuggling networks in Libya are becoming stronger and stronger,” Othman Belbesi, IOM’s Libya mission chief, said in Geneva. “About women, we heard a lot about bad treatment, rape, and being forced into prostitution.”

Libya’s political instability has made it a major exit point for African refugees crossing the Mediterranean to Europe. The lack of security has allowed illicit activities to thrive, and migrants are subjected to forced labor, abuse, and starvation. The country’s southern region is a hub for slave traders, as well as armed rebel and extremist groups, due to lack of governance. Aid workers who rescue migrants at sea point to the inhumane conditions in the country as part of the reason they don’t return migrants to Libya. The non-refoulement principle under international law prohibits countries that receive asylum-seekers from sending them back to places like Libya, where they could face persecution.

One Senegalese migrant told IOM he arrived in Agadez, Niger, where a smuggler asked him to pay $320 to continue north to Libya. But the driver who picked him up claimed the smuggler didn’t pay him and took the Senegalese man and other migrants to a slave market at a public parking arena in the town of Sabha, in southern Libya. A trafficker bought him and took him to a makeshift prison with more than 100 other migrant hostages. The traffickers placed his ransom at $480, and he said he often suffered beatings as he pleaded with his family by phone to pay. When he couldn’t raise the money, the traffickers sold him to another Libyan who increased his ransom to $970.

Captured migrants endure forced labor with little to no pay, IOM said. The Senegalese migrant said he offered to work as an interpreter for the kidnappers to avoid more torture as his family tried to raise the ransom. Some migrants who couldn’t pay were killed or starved to death, he said.

Giuseppe Loprete with IOM in Niger said several other migrants have recounted similar experiences with slave markets and forced labor.

“We’ve seen pictures, and it looks like concentration camps,” he told me. “One of the migrants said slaves are treated better than them.”

Loprete said some United Nations officials and members of other international aid groups have visited the detention centers. But the rescued migrants said their captors often hid their weapons and threatened the migrants not to say anything.

Christian Ani, a Libyan researcher with the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies, described the report as a “worrying phenomenon.” Ani said efforts to repatriate some of the migrants are helpful solutions that address the immediate issue. But he stressed the importance of tackling the underlying issues of the crisis, including Libya’s political turmoil and factors that make migrants leave their home countries.

“Libya is in a political crisis and that makes a profitable business for people who want to take advantage of the migrants,” he said.