People for sale: Where lives are auctioned for $400
Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- "Eight hundred," says the auctioneer. "900 ... 1,000 ... 1,100 ..." Sold. For 1,200 Libyan dinars -- the equivalent of $800.
Not a used car, a piece of land, or an item of furniture. Not "merchandise" at all, but two human beings.
One of the unidentified men being sold in the grainy cell phone video obtained by CNN is Nigerian. He appears to be in his twenties and is wearing a pale shirt and sweatpants.
He has been offered up for sale as one of a group of "big strong boys for farm work," according to the auctioneer, who remains off camera. Only his hand -- resting proprietorially on the man's shoulder -- is visible in the brief clip.
After seeing footage of this slave auction, CNN worked to verify its authenticity and traveled to Libya to investigate further.
Carrying concealed cameras into a property outside the capital of Tripoli last month, we witness a dozen people go "under the hammer" in the space of six or seven minutes.
"Does anybody need a digger? This is a digger, a big strong man, he'll dig," the salesman, dressed in camouflage gear, says. "What am I bid, what am I bid?"
Buyers raise their hands as the price rises, "500, 550, 600, 650 ..." Within minutes it is all over and the men, utterly resigned to their fate, are being handed over to their new "masters."
After the auction, we met two of the men who had been sold. They were so traumatized by what they'd been through that they could not speak, and so scared that they were suspicious of everyone they met.
Crackdown on smugglers
Each year, tens of thousands of people pour across Libya's borders. They're refugees fleeing conflict or economic migrants in search of better opportunities in Europe.
Most have sold everything they own to finance the journey through Libya to the coast and the gateway to the Mediterranean.
But a recent clampdown by the Libyan coastguard means fewer boats are making it out to sea, leaving the smugglers with a backlog of would-be passengers on their hands.
So the smugglers become masters, the migrants and refugees become slaves.
The evidence filmed by CNN has now been handed over to the Libyan authorities, who have promised to launch an investigation.
First Lieutenant Naser Hazam of the government's Anti-Illegal Immigration Agency in Tripoli told CNN that although he had not witnessed a slave auction, he acknowledged that organized gangs are operating smuggling rings in the country.
"They fill a boat with 100 people, those people may or may not make it," Hazam says. "(The smuggler) does not care as long as he gets the money, and the migrant may get to Europe or die at sea."
"The situation is dire," Mohammed Abdiker, the director of operation and emergencies for the International Organization for Migration, said in a statement after returning from Tripoli in April. "Some reports are truly horrifying and the latest reports of 'slave markets' for migrants can be added to a long list of outrages."
The auctions take place in a seemingly normal town in Libya filled with people leading regular lives. Children play in the street; people go to work, talk to friends and cook dinners for their families.
But inside the slave auctions it's like we've stepped back in time. The only thing missing is the shackles around the migrants' wrists and ankles.
Deportation 'back to square one'
Anes Alazabi is a supervisor at a detention center in Tripoli for migrants that are due to be deported. He says he's heard "a lot of stories" about the abuse carried out by smugglers.
The Treeq Alsika Migrant Detention Center in Tripoli, where some migrants are held by Libyan authorities before they are repatriated.
"I'm suffering for them. What I have seen here daily, believe me, it makes me feel pain for them," he says. "Every day I can hear a new story from people. You have to listen to all of them. It's their right to deliver their voices."
One of the detained migrants, a young man named Victory, says he was sold at a slave auction. Tired of the rampant corruption in Nigeria's Edo state, the 21-year-old fled home and spent a year and four months -- and his life savings -- trying to reach Europe.
Poster Comment:
If only Obama and Hillary hadn't taken the idiotic advice of globalist Donald Trump, the neocon interventionist.
#1: Liberator To: hondo68 (#0)
Great beginning to your post...A worthy issue that's been buried by the MSM and both treasonous parties. Slavery in the year 2017 has been conspicuously been ignored by the NWO Establishment, Mainstream Media, Academia, and Entertainment conglomerates.
HOWEVER, you get into trouble editorializing. No, actually when even your keyword ("Trump") is a lie, you immediately lose credibility.
#1: CITIZEN Trump was speaking as a civilian WITHOUT any facts those in the Belly of the Feral Beast would have.
#2: 0bama was President for 8 years. OF Kenyan ancestry. Had access to ALL the data and intel. HE KNEW about the African Slave Trade Market. So where is your bile for 0bama?
#3: Hitlery ALSO knew about the African Slave Trade Market. Again, you resrved your bile and criticism for Donald Trump. WHY??
#4: Do you even know what a "neocon " is? OR does? OR, to whom their loyalty lies? I think not.
Example: Dubya. The Bush Family. Bill Kristol of the National Review. Pro-War Republicans/Globalists.
#5: Comparing Donald Trump (who is anything BUT "establishment") to 0bama + Hitlery is just plain stupid.
Liberator posted on 2017-11-15 18:04:20 Reply Private Reply
#2: A Pole To: hondo68 (#0)
A Pole posted on 2017-11-15 18:41:15 Reply Private Reply
#3: Hondo68 To: Liberator, phony humanitarians, *Neo-Lib Chickenhawk Wars* (#1)
There are plenty of Democrat neocons and even a few Independents, Kerry, Hillary, Obama, Lieberman, Biden and many more.
There's always enough votes from both wings of the party, to fund idiotic interventionism.
None of the above is any better than Trump, they're all globalist NWO scum like The Donald. To paraphrase Reagan, if you've seen one neocon, you've seen 'em all!
Hondo68 posted on 2017-11-15 18:56:52 Reply Private Reply