Perhaps it is battle fatigue or outrage fatigue or tragedy fatigue, but the horrific resurgence of the African slave trade in Libya has been met largely with silence from the international community after a lone report from the U.N. on Libya’s enslavement of migrants desperately trying to reach Europe.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) says migrants from across the continent are making their way to Libya in hopes of finding transportation to Europe, primarily Italy and Spain. Upon arrival many are taken captive by traffickers and traders, imprisoned and held ransom. Those that cannot receive money from their families for their release are sold in market squares. Men are sold for labor according to their skill set. Women are sold for sex.
A Senegalese migrant, who was not named to protect his identity, said that he had been sold at one such market in the southern Libyan city of Sabha, before being taken to a makeshift prison where more than 100 migrants were being held hostage.
He said that migrants held at the facility were told to call their families, who would be asked for money to pay for their release, and some were beaten while on the phone to allow relatives to hear them being tortured.
He described “dreadful” conditions where migrants were forced to survive on limited food supplies, with those unable to pay either killed or left to starve, the report adds.
Another witness, who was able to raise the funds needed for his release after nine months, was later taken to hospital with severe malnutrition, weighing just 5.5 stone (35 kg).
Women, too, were bought by private Libyan clients and brought to homes where they were forced to be sex slaves, the witness said.
When slaves die or fall ill they are simply discarded and new ones are purchased in the marketplace.
In an age where American university students protest (sometimes violently) the “oppressive” torture of opposing opinions and march against vague concepts like “white privilege” and “microagressions” it is almost horrifically sad that the revival of a real slave trade has gone ignored by the elites of this nation and the world. The American protest class demands the names of buildings be changed if they bring to mind any notion or memory of slavery and the Civil War but have not uttered one word of support or protests at the authentic, terrifying, very real slave trade happening right now in real time.
The issue seems tailor made for the protest class, as it is intimately connected to the current immigration crisis being faced by both America and Europe. The IOM estimates that Europe may see as many as 30 million African migrants over the next decade. The plight of abused and poverty-stricken immigrants is only valuable to the 1% college Democrat crowd as long as they don’t remind us that there are real horrors happening every day across the globe that deserve their attention and concern.
IN = spoiled, comfortable middle and upper class college students posing as slaves to protest the “hate” of the Trump administration.
OUT = actual real-life slaves
While the U.N. did release a report on the matter some months ago, little has been done to address the problem as the international community continues to focus on the nuances of Trump’s daily Twitter routine. Some have surmised that the willful disregard for this story is fueled by the fact that Libya was to be seen as the lynchpin in Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy. Their “see no evil, hear no evil” approach to terrorism and extremism culminated in the Benghazi disaster and since that time the Democrat party has worked diligently to omit Libya from their foreign policy record.
If indeed (and that’s a very big IF) the U.S. can bear any responsibility for this situation it can only fall squarely on the shoulders of the Obama administration.
That certainly doesn’t make for good headlines these days.
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