Aware Migrants

Credits: The African Exponent

Desperate times lead to desperate actions, and innocent migrants who just want to seek greener pastures in Europe find themselves in the hands of the most callous and evil people. Slavery is taking centre-stage in Libya, where migrants are captured and forced to work for their owners in deplorable conditions and often for no reward at all. 

In Libya, there is no peace for black people, especially black men. They constantly have to fear for their lives; they have to live a life in which they are subjected to perpetual fear of what is known and what is unknown. The new African slave trade is intensifying, and getting worse by each day, exacerbated by the hard-line, far-right position which Europe is taking against migrants. 

In desperate attempts to part ways with debilitating poverty, people from Sub-Saharan Africa are selling themselves into slavery, believing that by doing so they are fleeing from a life of conflict, poverty, or repression to get a glistening life in Europe. However, the anti-migrant rhetoric that is gaining traction in Europe is preventing people from reaching the continent because of the European Union policies. As a result of this, migrants are enslaved and they die in their valiant but often futile attempts to escape. 

Present-day Libya is now the place where tens of thousands are detained indefinitely, spending years working for arbitrary sums or without pay altogether. These slaves  are at a constant risk of being sold off and auctioned from one militia to another. In this chaos, there is heavy influence of racism in spurring this modern-day slavery. It is always the black man who is targeted, it is the black man who they want. 

Read more: The African Exponent