Libya Slave Camps: How Nigerians are beaten, starved to death by traffickers

Nigerians are drowning in the Mediterranean. Others are sold as slaves in Libya. Read the full story here.

On Tuesday, November 28, 2017, 242 Nigerians disembarked a Libyan airline and took in the humid Lagos air with palpable relief.

They had just returned from Libya where modern day slavery now goes on unchecked.

“242 returned this evening. More stranded in Libya will be brought back in. Awareness is key”, announced Abike Dabiri-Erewa who is President Muhammadu Buhari’s Senior Special Assistant on Foreign Relations and Diaspora.

Down the stairway of the airplane, a young man kneels and lifts his eyes to the skies in gratitude. He had headphones wrapped round his neck. A few other returnees joined him with a dance and prayers of appreciation on their lips.

 

They were thanking God for bringing them back to their homeland alive; considering that over 3,000 migrants perished while crossing the Mediterranean in 2017.

Back in Libya, they were beaten up, auctioned off as slaves to work as labourers in plantations and starved to death while at it.

'Back to our countries'

In a CNN footage, one migrant had yelled: “Let them take us back to our various countries”.

The migrant was huddled alongside a thousand others inside an overcrowded Treeq Alsika Migrant Detention Center in Tripoli.

In the detention facility were Malians, Nigeriens, Ghanaians, Nigerians and Chadians. They had been rescued from warehouses where auctions of humans take place under dim lights and dark alleys.

 

“They are sold if those warehouses become overcrowded or if they run out of money to pay their smugglers. Of these rescued men, so many say they were held against their will”, narrated CNN’s Nima Elbagir.

Nigerians and other sub-Saharan Africans are being sold for as little as $400 by traffickers, to slave masters.

Elbagir says the auctioneers back in those warehouses are “brazen” and “unafraid. Even more horrifying, they didn’t feel the need to stop what they were doing”.

 

As CNN’s camera pans toward a young man named Victor who was lying on the floor, he blurted: “Just take us home, we want to go home….no food, no water, nothing… I was sold. On my way here, I was sold. If you look at the bodies of most people here, they were beaten mercilessly. Even your buttocks, they insert sharp objects. Most of them lost their lives. I was there, the person who came to buy me gave the man money and they took me home. The money wasn’t even much”.

Welcome home

Other migrants said they were beaten as they tended to the farms or plantations of slave masters. Some perish in the Mediterranean Sea en route Italy.

Nikky Laoye who works with the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons (NCFRMI) was at the Lagos airport to receive the migrants.

Laoye says “the federal government of Nigeria in collaboration with IOM (International Organisation of Migration) have been working together in facilitating the return of Nigerian migrants in Libya for over a year now.

 

"Many had travelled illegally through the desert trying to reach Italy via Libya before finding themselves in tight situations, thrown into jail for illegal entry or falling into the hands of wrong people and being sold into slavery, prostitution…”

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Laoye added that the migrants are often received by officials from NCFRMI, IOM and NEMA (National Emergency Management Agency) at the airport. Thereafter, they are profiled and handed food, accommodation and financial assistance.

Government response

Nigerians make the trip to Libya annually and this isn’t the first mass deportation featuring citizens from the most populous black nation in the world.

 

The federal government says it is working hard to stop Nigerians from fleeing their shores through illicit routes like Libya, even though President Muhammadu Buhari is yet to issue a statement in anger.

“We want a situation where Africa will be so good, people will be migrating to the continent. Not the other way around”, says presidential aide Dabiri-Erewa.

In an interview with Punch, Dabiri-Erewa said: "I believe that we should hold the government of Libya responsible. The United Nations and the European Union must also be involved in the investigation. The world should not accept the new slave trade to thrive in Libya. We know that if there is no demand, there would be no supply.

 

“While we should do our best to curtail supply as a government, the Libyan government should do its best to curtail demand. We are talking of a high-level human trafficking syndicate which does not only operate in Nigeria but all over the world.  We are talking of a high level syndicate that is bigger than the drug cartel.

"It is now easier to sell human beings nowadays in whole, or in parts but it is pretty difficult to sell drugs these days. Therefore human trafficking is not an issue anyone should joke with. I commend NAPTIP, which has been doing a lot to curb the menace.

“The agency has been able to apprehend more offenders, many of whom have been charged to court. There is also a whistle-blower policy by NAPTIP which I will encourage Nigerians to embrace by reporting the traffickers so that they could face instant prosecution.

“The administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has brought 5,000 Nigerians back to the country. The President has been bringing back those who want to come back home and more are still being expected.

 

“When they come back, we encouraged their states of origin to take care of them. I commend the Edo State Government in this regard. The government has been taking good care of their indigenes who returned to the country.

"The Edo State Attorney General has set up a special agency to deal with this matter; they take them back to the State and rehabilitate them. There have been cases of those who returned to the country and are doing well. It is not an Edo problem; it is a Nigerian problem.

“The demography is changing. The people you find in Burkina Faso, Mali, speak Yoruba; the ones you meet in Italy and other parts of Europe are from the South-South and those you find in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, are from the North. So, it is a problem we need to collectively tackle”.

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