Heartbreaking Footage Of Africans Being Sold At Open-Air Slave Markets In Libya

It’s 2018, and horrifying footage has emerged of African people being sold at auction at Libyan open-air slave markets. Tens of thousands of defenseless African migrants and refugees risk everything to reach Libya’s coast and next across the Mediterranean into Europe – which is considered to be the most dangerous route on Earth. According to reports, the migrants who end up in business detention centers are sold off like goods.

Libya has become a modern-day slave market, keeping migrants at the mercy of a complex trafficking web tolerated by the country’s many militia groups, an issue largely ignored by the world, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer said on Wednesday. Narciso Contreras, who spoke to migrants kept as slaves during a documentary photography project in Libya, said global attention focused on the North African country as a gateway for migrants attempting to reach Europe by sea.

As Leonard Doyle from the International Organization for Migration tells Counting the Cost: “As shocking as it seems, it’s indeed true. The reason slave trade is happening is that there is really no rule of law across much of Libya. Libya is a country as big as France, with a lot of space there. Migrants are coming there … they see the promise of a new life when they go to their Facebook feed, and they think something wonderful is waiting for them in Europe because a smuggler has abused the system and has sold them that lie.”

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