According to Aljazeera, the Libyan government is investigating reports that hundreds of African Migrants and refugees passing through Libya are being sold into modern-day slavery. According to other reports, the trade works by exploiting the vulnerabilities of people who risk there lives to get to Libya in order to cross the Mediterranean into Europe. Libya still remains the main gateway for people trying to get to Europe via sea, over 150,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean into Europe in the last three years. the refugees who most of the times are fleeing war, persecution, and poverty come from different parts of Africa. The security and financial collapse of Libya ever since Gaddafi was overthrown has caused a boom in the smuggling business. According to the international organization for migration, human trafficking has become so normalized that people are being sold for as little as $400.
According to Dosomething.org,
- 80% of all trafficking involves sexual exploitation and 19% forced labor according to some estimates
- There are about 20 to 30 million slaves in the world today
- “According to the U.S state department, 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders, 80% of them are women and half are children”
From the reports we are seeing, slave trade as business is booming in Lybia, the reason could be that we live under the false assumption that slavery is finished. Surely in 2017 with all the advances in technology, how could such things be going on without us knowing about it and without anyone doing anything to stop it? But as Leonard Doyle from the international organization for migration said in an interview, ” Lybia is a country with no rule of law, it is the size of France with a vast open land and when they arrive in Lybia they are placed in a murder machine or an extortion machine. Their belongings are taken away from them, they are tortured and then sold in an open public auction”
Migrants in Brussels started protesting demanding the Libyan Government investigate after CNN first broke the story. The Libyan Government has come out and they will investigate. Let’s not forget that the issues we now have in Libya are a direct result of Hillary Clinton’s intervention in Libya. Before America went in, Libya was not perfect, but it was stable, Hilary Clinton under the Obama administration managed to remove Gaddafi from power, but did not have a solid plan of how they were going to implement democracy and replace the leadership with a better one. The result is Libya is now a hotbed bed for terrorism, slave trade and lawlessness.
Finally, business requires buyers to thrive, these slave traders would not be selling people if there no one buying the slaves. An investigation needs to focus on who is buying and not just the sellers. Anyone involved in this should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.