A man called out numbers against the murky darkness of the Libyan night: “400, 500, 600, 650.” These were bids in Libyan dinars during a slave auction. <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/14/africa/libya-migrant-auctions/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Video footage</a> of these scenes, aired in mid-November by CNN, thrust concerns about the conditions facing migrants at Europe’s borders back into the spotlight.
In response, the EU <a href="https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-Homepage/35895/joint-press-release-high-representative-vice-president-federica-mogherini-and-president_en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">called for</a> “swift action”, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/29/europe-promises-44bn-marshall-plan-africa-migrant-slavery-libya/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced a plan</a> to launch “concrete military action” against the perpetrators. The Nigerian government also said it had begun to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-libya-nigeria/nigeria-flies-migrants-home-from-libya-after-slavery-scare-idUSKBN1DT2VV" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bring home</a> some of its citizens stranded in Libya.
Efforts to enable people to escape from situations of slavery, violence and exploitation in Libya are certainly welcome. But they will need to go beyond the short-term perspective that so often accompanies responses to proclamations of crisis. And these new efforts will reek of hypocrisy if they do not also recognise the relationship between existing migration control policies and the vulnerability of migrants using routes into and through Libya.
The story of young men sold as slaves in Libya was the focus of debates at the <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/unsc-condemns-reported-slave-trading-libya-171129065445791.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">UN Security Council</a> and topped the agenda at a <a href="http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/international-summit/2017/11/29-30/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">major summit of European and African leaders</a>. Slavery and other abuses are an “abomination” that “can no longer be ignored”, <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2017/sc13094.doc.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stated Filippo Grandi</a>, the UN’s high commissioner for refugees.
&#8220;I was arrested and imprisoned in southern Libya… I was sold to a slave trader, along with other Eritreans, Somalis and Nigerians. This person took us to a farm, where we could not leave except to go to work at a construction site and return. We were always guarded by armed people.&#8221;
But stories of forced labour, exploitation and the buying and selling of migrants are not particularly new. I heard them myself in 2015 when I was part of <a href="https://policypress.co.uk/unravelling-europes-migration-crisis" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a research team</a> which carried out interviews with nearly 200 people who had departed from Libya by boat, towards Italy and Malta.I was arrested and imprisoned in southern Libya … I was sold to a slave trader, along with other Eritreans, Somalis and Nigerians. This person took us to a farm, where we could not leave except to go to work at a construction site and return. We were always guarded by armed people.
These words, from a young Malian man, were mirrored by many others who spoke of being held captive, put into forced work or bought and sold. Some were set free once they had gathered enough ransom money, wired over to them by family and friends. Others might be released when their labour was no longer required or if they managed, somehow, to escape. But it was also not unusual to hear people being beaten and even see others die at the hands of their “owners”.
Our project has not been the only one to report such findings. In 2016, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) <a href="http://unitedkingdom.iom.int/abuse-exploitation-and-trafficking-iom-reveals-data-scale-danger-and-risks-migrants-face" target="_blank" rel="noopener">found that</a> 71% of migrants who crossed the central Mediterranean route from North Africa to Europe had experienced exploitation, particularly kidnapping, forced labour, carrying out work without being paid and being kept at locations against their will. In February 2017, <a href="https://www.sky.com/watch/title/programme/ca063fef-330c-4245-b948-1ea2c8a56570" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a Sky documentary</a> described Libya as “hell” for migrants and a <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=11&amp;ved=0ahUKEwj8svTR7erXAhVBLMAKHc3JABoQFghYMAo&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalinitiative.net%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F03%2Fglobal-initiative-human-conveyor-belt-human-smuggling-in-libya-march-2017.pdf&amp;usg=AOvVaw05u6HKwEmxNFbm4kHJhYde" target="_blank" rel="noopener">study of trafficking and smuggling there</a> referred to “the extortion economy and new slave trade”.
<h2>European complicity</h2>
Public figures are right to condemn people being sold as slaves in Libya. But their concern has an air of insincerity when they have known about it for years. The EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, Federica Mogherini, <a href="https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-Homepage/35895/joint-press-release-high-representative-vice-president-federica-mogherini-and-president_en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">expressed her</a> “total condemnation of these despicable acts” but also <a href="http://www.lastampa.it/2017/11/29/esteri/summit-ueafrica-mogherini-i-paesi-africani-facciano-la-loro-parte-riprendendosi-i-migranti-QFifnZX3DQzQcR64Fu5daL/pagina.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stated</a> that “this is not something that began one month ago. Everybody has known about it for years”.
For officials to say now that violence, exploitation and slavery can “no longer be ignored” belies the fact that these issues were downplayed and pushed aside as the EU pursued collaboration with the Libyan authorities to control migration.
The primary objective of European approaches has instead been to stem the flow of people departing Libya by boat. Since the declaration of a migrant crisis back in 2015, the EU has given increasing amounts of <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-2187_en.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">funding</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/11/number-of-migrants-arriving-in-italy-from-libya-falls-by-half-in-july" target="_blank" rel="noopener">training</a> to the Libyan coastguard and to detention centres to keep migrants on Libyan soil.
In the summer of 2017, an emboldened Libyan coastguard then made <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/12/medical-rescue-ship-suspends-work-after-alleged-threats-by-libyan-coastguard" target="_blank" rel="noopener">threats of violence</a> to international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) engaged in search and rescue missions at sea. Soon after, <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/libyan-militia-chief-admits-deal-with-tripoli-to-stem-migrant-flow-ahmed-dabbashi-brigade-migrant-crisis-italy-538lwtgf5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">an armed militia west of Tripoli</a> with backing from the Libyan authorities – who are themselves supported by Italian and EU authorities – stepped in to intercept boats and prevent people leaving towards Italy.
These policies to stop boats arriving on European shores have had significant implications for the conditions of migrants in Libya. Many of the people we interviewed told us that they saw boats to Europe as the only way to flee. Now, once they are pushed back to Libya, they are held in detention centres, many of which have been <a href="http://www.msf.org/en/article/libya-arbitrary-detention-refugees-asylum-seekers-and-migrants-must-stop" target="_blank" rel="noopener">criticised by international observers</a> as overcrowded, unsanitary places where migrants are exploited.
Research reports <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0ahUKEwix-NuzgOvXAhVoCcAKHSygDxQQFggpMAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalinitiative.net%2Freport-the-human-conveyor-belt-trends-in-human-trafficking-and-smuggling-in-post-revolution-libya%2F&amp;usg=AOvVaw0csii2EpwQhapmsT-Le4WW" target="_blank" rel="noopener">point to</a> “abundant evidence” which shows that “detention facilities in Libya are the site of sustained criminal activity, as recruitment grounds for smuggling activity but also processing centres for ransom extraction and slavery.” Another report by the NGO Refugees International <a href="https://www.refugeesinternational.org/reports/2017/libya" target="_blank" rel="noopener">noted</a> how often “in Libya the policeman is a smuggler, and the smuggler is a policeman”. Despite this, just a few months ago <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-41071796" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Macron claimed</a> that Libya could be an appropriate place to process asylum requests.
The containment of migrants in Libya is therefore likely to be reinforcing the very situation that Europe’s leaders appear to be so angry about now. Médecins Sans Frontières <a href="http://www.msf.org/en/article/libya-open-letter-european-governments-are-feeding-business-suffering" target="_blank" rel="noopener">described it</a> as “feeding the business of suffering”.
<h2>Moving beyond a crisis</h2>
European approaches to migration across the Mediterranean have repeatedly been shaped by urgent attempts to address <a href="https://theconversation.com/humanitarian-emergency-is-being-used-to-justify-dangerous-measures-to-stop-migration-40734" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sudden crises</a>. But the situation in Libya cannot easily be addressed by such a short-term response. People smuggling has been a <a href="http://www.ecfr.eu/publications/summary/libyas_migrant_smuggling_highway_lessons_for_europe5002" target="_blank" rel="noopener">thriving economic sector for years</a>. The profits from smuggling, exploitation and now slavery provide important funds for different groups around the country. <a href="http://globalinitiative.net/report-the-human-conveyor-belt-trends-in-human-trafficking-and-smuggling-in-post-revolution-libya/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">One report describes</a> migrants as “simply another commodity to be exploited” by the various armed groups vying to control parts of Libyan territory.
An important contribution to finding a longer term solution could come from a newly announced “<a href="http://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/press/2017/11/5a1edc7c4/unhcr-welcomes-libyas-transit-facility-expedite-third-country-solutions.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">transit and departure facility</a>” in Tripoli providing opportunities for people to escape from Libya. They would be resettled elsewhere, transferred to UNHCR facilities in other countries or returned to their country of origin. But so far there are only 10,500 places available – far below the number of places required – and this is little more than the nearly 9,000 returns <a href="https://www.iom.int/sitreps/libya-voluntary-humanitarian-return-vhr-assistance-reintegration-support-stranded-migrants-4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">already carried out</a> by the IOM in 2017.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88589/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />After a decade of repeatedly declaring migrant crises and emergencies at their borders, it is time the EU took a broader, longer-term approach. This has to recognise the structural relationship between policies of border control, dynamics of migration and patterns of migrant vulnerability and exploitation. Intensifying border controls without addressing the reasons why people move or providing alternatives is likely to reinforce the dangers that they face.
&#8211; Written by <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/simon-mcmahon-161290" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Simon McMahon</a>, Research Fellow, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/coventry-university-1346" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Coventry</a><a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/coventry-university-1346" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Un</a><a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/coventry-university-1346" target="_blank" rel="noopener">iversity</a>
This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/slave-auctions-in-libya-are-the-latest-evidence-of-a-reality-for-migrants-the-eu-prefers-to-ignore-88589" target="_blank" rel="noopener">original article</a>.

Slave auctions in Libya are the latest evidence of a reality for migrants the EU prefers to ignore

While on my first late Monday morning subway ride, from 34th Street to 125th Street in Harlem, New York, it felt like I was traveling from Soweto to Park Station in Johannesburg, with a few notable exceptions.
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Just like back home, the coach was jam-packed, but there were no young men train surfing and the construction workers wore clean and bright work suits, without the odor that comes with long hours and back-breaking work. Some passengers jammed to music coming from their headphones; the dapper executives were fixated on their iPads held in one hand while the other grasped the overhead rails. Initially, feeling slightly paranoid, I was vigilant and clung to my valuables. After a while, I loosened up as I realized how chilled my fellow passengers were.
Amid the frantic activity of New York, I was flooded with memories of Johannesburg as three African women sat opposite me. The women, each of them hawkers, had two oversized plastic bags between their legs. They wore identical black headscarves and matching flat shoes. Taking no notice of the commuters squeezed around them, the women chatted and passed kente cloth, a traditional Ghanaian interwoven material, among themselves. Kente has become an integral part of African-American graduation attire.
While a handful of passengers were annoyed, the hustle of the hawkers, and the ‘gibberish’ coming from their tongues, left the rest amazed. I came to realize that the women left their village in Africa for the dream of a better life in the land of the free. Not a word of English was used in their conversation, but they know the basics of the language to make ends meet. I have met many other African foreigners like them who told me they learned English in the United States (US).
Soon after, I stumbled upon a 10-foot bronze statue of Harriet Tubman, the African American anti-slavery activist. Like the hawkers on the train, Tubman’s head was covered with a head wrap. Unlike the hawkers, Tubman was born into slavery in Maryland around 1820. In her late 20s, Tubman, along with her two brothers escaped the plantations; her brothers got cold feet and returned, leaving her to flee to the free state of Pennsylvania alone.
Later on, Tubman returned to Maryland to free slaves with the help of other freed African Americans. She carried out her mission armed with a shotgun. She never fired the gun because nobody tried to stop her. For her work, Tubman was called ‘Moses’ by her people.
Once slavery was abolished, Tubman joined the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. The former slaves took African Methodism across the Atlantic to Liberia and Sierra Leone, and later southern Africa.
Tubman’s statue, on Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem, overlooks an array of African restaurants in an area dubbed ‘Small Africa’. The owner of one of these eateries, Patisserie des Ambassades, is Gorgui N’doye. This Senegalese engineer opened the first restaurant in the south Harlem 16 years ago, with less than 10 employees. Today, Patisserie des Ambassades has 50 staff and opens for 20 hours every day.
N’doye started the restaurant in 2001 when Harlem was notorious for being a gangster’s paradise. The area underwent gentrification in 2005 and business started to boom.
N’doye has since returned to Senegal where has expanded his business to exporting peanuts to Asia and South Africa. In his absence, Patisserie des Ambassades is managed by another Senegalese, Ahmadou Ndiaye Jean.
Harlem’s facelift, however, hasn’t benefited everyone. Eric Fraska, a 31-year-old Liberian financier at MoneyGram in New York, laments the displacement of black folk due to the rising cost of living in the area.
Fraska came to the US as a 20-year-old to study. Over the years, he witnessed a lot of change. Like Ndoye, Fraska is saving money to start a business in Africa. He says he’s certainly going back.
“My education and skills are no longer needed here. There’s nothing more to do here. Africa is the future,” Fraska says over a frothing cappuccino.
I have no doubt the next time I catch up with Fraska will be in either Johannesburg or Monrovia.

‘There’s Nothing More To Do Here.  Africa Is The Future’

The São José-Paquete de Africa had been at sea for over three weeks when, just off Cape Town’s treacherous coastline, it was overcome by a bellowing storm. As gusty winds yanked at its sails, storey-high waves pushed the vessel closer to shore.
Captain Manuel João from Portugal refused to give in, after all was just a few sea miles away from Table Bay. The plan was to anchor there, stock up on food, water and other supplies, and sail on to Brazil to offload his precious cargo: 500 men, women and children from southeast Africa, packed like sardines in the dank belly of his ship. After delivering his load, João would return to Mozambique for a fresh shipment.
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Mother Nature decided otherwise. On December 27, 1794, the São José smashed against razor-sharp rocks, 100 meters off present-day Clifton, an affluent suburb of Cape Town. The vessel disintegrated into matchwood and sank to the bottom of the Atlantic – taking 212 slaves with it. Those who survived were captured and sold into bondage in the Cape, possibly to recoup the damages.
The São José was soon to be forgotten, until sports divers stumbled upon her remains in the 1980s – after which the ship ended up in the archives as the Van Schuylenberg. This Dutch merchant vessel had gone down off the Cape coast in the 1750s.
In 2011, South African marine archaeologist, Jaco Boshoff, came across an account by João, in which he described how the ship had left Lisbon on April 27, 1794, to purchase slaves from Mozambique. On the 24th day of the voyage to Table Bay, for an interim supply stop before crossing the Atlantic, the ship was overcome by bad weather and sank.
More information has since emerged from the archives in Portugal and Mozambique, as well as the bottom of the Atlantic, which suggested that the wreck off Clifton was everything except a Dutch merchant vessel. So, in 2014, the partners of the Slave Wrecks Projects – which includes Iziko Museums of South Africa, the South African Heritage Resources Agency, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC – began unearthing what was left of the wreckage.
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“We found iron ballast blocks, which were often used to stabilize slave ships. Human cargo tends to move around and is therefore more unstable than dead weight, hence the blocks,” says Paul Tichmann, curator of the Iziko Slave Lodge, a museum in Cape Town.
He adds that Portuguese archival documents confirmed that the São José had loaded iron ballast before departing for Mozambique.
“We also found slave shackles, copper nails, and sheathing,” he says. “Tests have indicated that these date back to the 1790s. The timber remains we have found, was proven to be a type of Mozambican hardwood, also dating back to that particular time.”
Unearthing whatever was left of the São José was not easy.
“It is a very difficult area for diving. The waters are very turbulent, with strong currents. One of the divers described it as working in a washing machine. There were times, they could only dive three days per month,” says Tichmann.
The discovery of the ship – which was announced in June – has been hailed as an extraordinary find, making headlines around the world. It is one the few transatlantic slave ship wrecks ever recovered.
The São José’s significance goes beyond that, says Patrick Harries, who has been studying the role of the Cape of Good Hope in the transatlantic slave trade for decades. The wreck, he says, has once again proven that the Cape – generally known as a refreshment stop for ordinary merchant ships – was an important service spot for slave vessels en route to the Americas.
“It served as such from the mid-1700s to 1834, when the trading and owning of slaves was abolished in all British territories,” he says, adding that slave ships anchoring in Table Bay were transporting slaves who had embarked in Mozambique, southern Tanzania, and Madagascar.
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“Many were brought to the coast after being captured in the deep interior, for instance where Zambia and Malawi are now,” Harries says.
“They were then loaded onto ships in Mozambique, which would then sail to Table Bay to refuel prior to sailing on to their final destination. Close to half a million slaves were taken from southeast Africa.”
While supplying slave ships with wood, food and water, thus making a profit out of the transatlantic trade, Cape Town also absorbed some of these slaves.
“Generally speaking, a ship owner would sell 10 percent of his slaves in Table Bay to pay for the fuel and supplies,” Harries says. “They would end up working on farms.”
While the Dutch shipped East Africans into the Cape, they didn’t play much of a role in the transatlantic slave trade. The trade in humans from southeast Africa to the New World started under the French in the 1770s.
“The French had been using African slave labour since the early 1700s to keep the sugar plantations on Reunion Island and Mauritius going. They started transporting East Africans across the Atlantic upon realizing that they were worth more in Saint-Domingue than in Reunion,” says Harries.
Situated in the Caribbean, Saint-Domingue used to be the sugar capital of the world.
“Sugar was the petrol of those days, making it the jewel of the French empire,” says Harries.
The tide turned in 1791, when slaves in Saint-Domingue staged an uprising and took control, renaming the region Haiti. This put an end to the French East African slave trade.
Like their French counterparts, Portuguese and Brazilian slave ships stopped in Table Bay for supplies before crossing the Atlantic.
“Particularly the months between October and March, known as the slave season, were busy. There could be as many as three ships in Table Bay, each carrying 300 to 400 slaves,” says Harries.
Cape Town continued to service slave ships until December 1, 1834, the year the trading and owning of slaves was outlawed. This prohibited any slave ship from anchoring in Table Bay and put an end to the Cape’s transatlantic slavery role. This didn’t end the influx of cheap African labor into the Cape.
“In 1834, the Brits had granted themselves the right to hunt down any slave ship within their waters. The slaves on board these captured vessels were brought to British controlled territories, the Cape included. Here, these so-called ‘Prize Negroes’ were sold on as apprentices, for up to 14 years,” says Tichmann.
The ‘Prize Negroes’ were often worse off than slaves.
“Apprentices were a prized and expensive commodity. Those who bought apprentices felt they had to get the most out of them as long as they could legally have them. Conditions were therefore very harsh. They would not get paid. It was another form of slavery, really. This happened until the 1880s if I am not mistaken,” says Tichmann.
Records show that 3,000 to 4,000 ‘Prize Negroes’ were imported into the Cape, on top of the previously mentioned 63,000 African, Asian and Indian slaves.
Both Tichmann and Harries hope that the São José discovery will trigger a greater level of awareness around Cape Town’s role in the slave trade.
“South Africa always thought it was safe from that particular history, but in fact, the transatlantic trade in Africans is very much part of it,” Harries says. “It is important that people in the Western Cape acknowledge this. A large part of its population, after all, are descendents from these African slaves. Their ancestors survived a month in a slave ship, and experienced the most awful conditions imaginable. We need to remember,” says Harries.

Tag: Slavery

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Slave auctions in Libya are the latest evidence of a reality for migrants the EU prefers to ignore

‘There’s Nothing More To Do Here. Africa Is The Future’

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