In this month of November 2017, several French TV channels have made mention of a horror that shocked me to the guts. To me, writing is a way of passing emotions and a call to reflection and action. I feel deeply hurt by this painful sequence. 

The images are shocking. The times of sad memory have returned to the 21st century. This is about the sale of Africans as slaves in Libya not far from Tripoli. Everything was filmed in August 2017 in hidden camera by Nima Elbagir of CNN (Cable News Network). Born in Sudan and based in London as an international correspondent. She is a reporter and a specialist in tough investigations.

In the report of the newspaper Le Monde section Africa it reads: “Who needs a minor? He’s a miner, a big strong man, he’s going to dig. In the space of a few minutes, CNN journalists witnessed the sale of a dozen migrants, handed over by smugglers for sums ranging from 500 to 700 Libyan dinars (up to 435 Euros). These “slave markets” would take place once or twice a month”¹

CNN has just highlighted this reduction of human beings to slavery in Libya. Everyone knew, it seems, but nobody dared to say a word. The situation no doubt suited those who hid in silence. The images have given then freedom to come out and talk. Black trade slave has become acceptable vice. Migrants have become a bargaining chip. To have peace in the West, the European Union asks to keep them in Libya which we know that the security situation has worsened since the assassination of Muammar Gaddafi. More than ever, this country has become a non-state, or a state of lawlessness, a no man’s land. France, meanwhile, has chosen to block misery in Africa, not to allow it enter Europe with the creation of hotspots (hot spots in English, to designate these centers of registration of migrants) created to manage exceptional migratory flows that invade Europe. Hotspots in Niger and Chad in exchange for 3 or 4 billion Euros. Jacques Barou writes: “Even if not all individuals and all peoples have the vocation to migrate, the human being in general seems to be a homo migrator as much as he is a homo economicus or a zoon politkon”²

We are partly sedentary and at the same time, we remember that we come from far away. Migration can be voluntary or forced. The fault lies with Africa, which does not want to take care of itself and which delivers its children on the paths of the world to seek welfare elsewhere. We blame Africa who does not refuse to depend on others. Africa is sacrificing its children who, at the risk of their lives, are trying to access the rich regions of the world. It is necessary to deal with the evil at the root. The clandestine are the object of the denial of their existence. They work without being declared. “Why, all this time, have clandestine immigrants not appeared for what they are too: workers, building buildings, cleaning offices, supervising supermarkets, cooking in restaurants, babysitting, etc?»³

Some voices rise to protest against this slavery Professor Achille Mbembe, the writer Alain Manckou, the journalist Claudy Siar, footballers like Didier Drogba, Paul Pogba, Samuel Eto, Lilian Thuram. African musicians: Alpha Blondy, Koffi Olomide, Werrason, Tiken Jah Fakoly, Mokobe, Passi, Youssou Ndour, Oumou Sangare … Politicians react:Alpha Condé decides to call back home his charge d’affaires in Libya, Rock MC Kabore is indignant and calls back home his ambassador, Rwanda is ready to welcome 30,000 African migrants, Côte d’Ivoire repatriates its nationals, Issoufou Mahamadou enjoins the Libyan authorities and international organizations to do their utmost to stop this practice of another age that we thought was over, Senegal wants clarifications on this scandal and officially asks the African Union and the United Nations to promptly launch an investigation, The United Nations denounces an inhuman situation, Emmanuel Macron calls this a crime against the ‘humanity … many have spoken, but the voice of both the African church and the universal is still waited. The causes of this migration are poverty, conflict, the depletion of natural resources, the search for new territories to exploit because of population growth… Here are the vectors of this global migration.

Through poverty, we mean in particular the awareness of the economic inequalities that are growing between the inhabitants of the same planet. Awareness of the problems of the city, or pairs City / suburbs, Center / peripheries, Center / shantytowns or slums: unemployment degraded housing, delinquency, violence. All this is a social geography that opposes rich and poor. “There would be no scandal if all men could be tourists or ethnologists, if the mobility of some was not a luxury while the mobility of others is a destiny or a fatality. And this scandal holds true for ethnology. There are Japanese ethnologists in Africa, but no African ethnologists in Japan.”⁴ There is always a permanent mix of peoples and cultures. Peoples are not stable entities, they are constructions. If we do not want to make migration a right for blacks, let’s at least make poverty eradication a global priority. The fault lies also with Europe, which is barricading itself: “The pressures suffered by migrants are the product of the migration choices of” rich “states or wealthy nations.

A restrictive policy raises the cost of immigration, favoring the market for smugglers and traffickers. In addition, the lack of flexibility in the current management of mobility (“one-way” logic) often forces migrants to attempt everything to be able to pay back for the cost of their trip”.⁵ When one is young and one is convinced to have a better life elsewhere, that person will go to the end of her dreams. Too bad the lambs are handed over to feed to the wolves.

Florent Alain BIKINI Musini
PhD student, sociology of migrations
University of Strasbourg

=========================

Footnotes

^{1. « Libye : des migrants vendus aux enchères comme esclaves », in Le Monde Afrique du 15.11.2017↩}

^{2. BAROU Jacques, op.cit., p.7.↩}

^{3. BARRON Pierre et alii, on bosse ici, on reste ici ! La grève des sans-papiers : une aventure inédite, Paris, la découverte, 2011, pp 8-9. (312p.)↩}

^{4. WIHTOL DE WENDEN Catherine, op.cit., p.70.↩}

^{5. ROCHEL Johan, Repenser l’immigration. Une boussole éthique, Lausanne, Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes, 2016, p.104.↩}