AMAZING REVELATION ON THE RENEWED SLAVE TRADE:
Slavery had long existed in Europe and Africa, but the history of the Atlantic slave trade began in the 1440s.
The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade was the largest long distance coerced movement of people in history and, prior to the mid-nineteenth century, formed the major demographic well-spring for the repeopling of America following the collapse of Amerindian population.
Cumulatively, as late as 1820,nearly four Africans had crossed the Atlantic for every European, and given the differences in the sex ratios between European and African migrant streams, about four out of every five females that traversed the Atlantic were from Africa.
From the fifteen century, the Atlantic Ocean, once a formidable barrier that prevented regular interaction between those people inhabiting the four continents it touched, became a commercial highway that integrated the histories of Africa,Europe and that of America’s for the first time.As the above figures suggest, slavery and the slave trade were linchpins of this process.
With the decline of Amerindian population, labor from Africa formed the basis of the exploitation of the gold and agricultural resources of the export sector of the Americans with sugar plantations absorbing well over two third of slaves carried across the Atlantic by the major European and Euro-American powers.
Forseveral centuries slaves were the most reason for contact between Europeans and Africans.
MIGRANTS FOR SALE :SLAVE TRADE IN PRESENT LIBYA
Libya’s UN-backed government says it is investigating allegations that hundreds of African refugees and migrants passing through Libya are being bought and sold in modern-day slave markets.
According to reports the trade works by preying on the tens of thousands of vulnerable people who risk everything to get to Libya’s Coast and then across the Mediterranean into Europe-a route that has been described as the deadliest route on earth.
Libya is the main gateway for people attempting to reach Europe by sea,with more than 150,000 people making the crossing in each of the past three years.
“They(the refugees) are from several African countries and they have fled war,poverty and unemployment in their countries”.
“With the security and financial collapse in Libya, human trafficking and smuggling have become a booming trade,” says Mohammoud Abduwahad,reporting from detention center in the Libyan Capital, Tripoli.
Modern-day slavery is widespread around the world and Libya is by no means unique… But what’s particularly shocking is that this is happening effectively in open where people can go to a farmhouse,place a bid and end up’owning’ a human being. There is no proper registration process for the ten of thousands of refugees arriving in Libya.
According to reports,the business in these centers is unsupervised in some parts of Libya, and stories of torture, rape and forced labor have emerged.
When the centers get two crowded,people are then allegedly sold off like goods in an open market. Survivors have told the UN’s Migration Agency that they use smartphones to connect with smugglers to get them to Libya’s Coast,and that they were then sold,being held for ransom, used as forced labor or for sexual exploitation.
The lnternational Organization for Migration says trade in humans has become so normalized that people are being bought and sold in public for as little as $400.
“As shocking as it seems, it’s indeed true”,Leonard Doyle from the International Organization for Migration testifies.
“The reason it (slave trade) can happen is because there is really no rule of law across Libya. Libya is a country as big as France,with a lot of space there”.
“Migrants are coming in,they see the promise of a new life when they go to Facebook feed and they think something wonderful is waiting for them in Europe, because a smuggler has abused the system and sold them that lie”.He explained that when they arrive in Libya,”they get off the bus and they are quickly put into a kind of murder machine, an extortion machine. They are robbed of their possession, their families are called,they are force,they are tortured, they give them money.And then they are sold .Unbelievable,but they are sold in open public auctions: $400 for a labouring man,maybe a bit more for a woman who can be put in sex trade.And this is what’s happening across the country”.Doyle stressed that this issue shows that the international community should pay more attention to post-Gaddafi Libya.
“There is an important responsibility to help….what’s particularly important now is that this issue is attracting global attention”,says Doyle.
“Modern-day slavery is widespread around the world and Libya is by no means unique. It’s happening in the developed countries of the world as well as the underdeveloped countries”.
“But what is particularly shocking is that this is happening effectively in the open, where people can go to farmhouse, place a bid and end up ‘owning’ a human being”.
