Libya

Mod­ern Day Slav­ery in Libya Pod­cast 

 This pod­cast focus­es on the mod­ern day slave trade that is cur­rent­ly tak­ing place in Libya. Many African migrants and refugees that are escap­ing their coun­tries and try­ing to get to Europe for a bet­ter  life. But they are being held in lim­bo in Libya, where they are being detained and some being sold into slavery.

Mod­ern Day Slave Trade in Libya Script

What you just heard, was a song called Saw­fa Nabqa Huna, a pop­u­lar rev­o­lu­tion­ary chant or what’s referred to as a nasheed in Ara­bic. It is trans­lat­ed to

“We will stay here

So the Pain goes away

We will stay here

The melody will sweeten

My home land My home land”

 It’s a nasheed of resis­tance, free­dom and change dur­ing the 2011 Libyan Rev­o­lu­tion. A song that unit­ed those who sang it, in the hope that Libya would be become an unre­strict­ed and uni­fied state in the future.

Fast for­ward six years lat­er and a dif­fer­ent chant is being heard for free­dom. This time from the African migrants in Libya being trans­port­ed and bought as slaves.

The Libyan state has failed its peo­ple, after the fall of Gaddaf­fi, Libya has been in sham­bles, a coun­try torn in civ­il wars and con­stant attacks from ISISI. With a failed state comes smug­glers, human traf­fick­ing and now mod­ern-day slave trade. This is a reflec­tion of how dys­func­tion­al the state has become since the 2011 Libyan Revolution.

The Libyan Slave Trade con­tro­ver­sy was exposed just back in Novem­ber 2017 when a video, pub­lished by CNN. It report­ed­ly showed African migrants being show­cased by auc­tion­eers as if they were prop­er­ty as smug­glers sell them to the high­est bid­der. Some for as lit­tle as $400 each

The main ques­tion is how did Libya get to this point? Here is what, Thione Niang, polit­i­cal activist and co-founder of Akon Light­ing Africa, had to say dur­ing an inter­view on MSNBC

“Excerpt Audio”

Before the down­fall of Libya, it was a func­tion­ing state that played a huge role in hold­ing back ille­gal migrants from cross­ing the Mediter­ranean Sea to reach Europe, It was the gate­keep­er of the African Cri­sis. Many of these migrants are flee­ing their coun­tries to escape pover­ty and vio­lence, to seek bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ties in Europe. Accord­ing to Aman­da Saku­ma, a nation­al reporter at MSNBC,

“The coun­try’s 1,100-mile coast­line has effec­tive­ly become an open bor­der with­out gov­ern­ment forces to mon­i­tor who comes and who goes. Smug­glers have filled the void, will­ing to tight­ly pack hun­dreds of migrants at a time into flim­sy ves­sels and shut­tle them to Italy. ”

Accord­ing to, The Inter­na­tion­al Orga­ni­za­tion for Migra­tion, it esti­mat­ed that near­ly 182,000 migrants from Libya have land­ed in Italy between the years of 2013–2014, exac­er­bat­ing a mas­sive refugee cri­sis already spilling out of Syr­ia and oth­er parts of the Mid­dle East.

http://www.msnbc.com/specials/migrant-crisis/libya

Now that the video of African migrants being sold has gone viral, what has the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty done? So far The UN sec­re­tary-gen­er­al, Anto­nio Guter­res said in response to the video that he was “hor­ri­fied” at the find­ings and called for imme­di­ate investigations.

Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Guter­res said,

“I abhor these appalling acts and call upon all com­pe­tent author­i­ties to inves­ti­gate these activ­i­ties with­out delay and to bring the per­pe­tra­tors to jus­tice,” Guter­res said. “I have asked the rel­e­vant Unit­ed Nations actors to active­ly pur­sue this matter.”

Urg­ing the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to unite on the issue, the UN chief called on all coun­tries to adopt the UN Con­ven­tion against Transna­tion­al Orga­nized Crime and its pro­to­col on human trafficking.

The sto­ry on Libya pro­vides the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty a reminder of the need to man­age migra­tion flows in a humane man­ner that address­es the root causes.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/20/africa/un-secretary-general-libya-slave-auctions/index.html

Many coun­tries since the release of the viral video have con­demned inhu­mane actions that are tak­ing place in Libya. How­ev­er this sto­ry is still devel­op­ing there hasn’t been a con­crete plan to erad­i­cate the ille­gal actions since it is still under investigation.

Libya, the first domi­no that fell, caus­ing an unfor­tu­nate chain reac­tion that is still pro­gress­ing through­out the Africa, Europe and the Mid­dle East. The Libyan Rev­o­lu­tion in 2011 was intend­ed to be a turn­ing point in African His­to­ry, but this is not how the Libyan cit­i­zens imag­ined it. They envi­sioned progress and chant­ed songs for democ­ra­cy and equal­i­ty. Today it is quite the opposite.

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