Migrants tortured in extortion videos
• Shocking video footage has emerged of naked African migrants having burning plastic dripped on their bare backs and being whipped by people- traffickers in a squalid camp in Libya to extort money.
Smuggling gangs are seen to be subjecting migrants and refugees to torture in order to pressure their families back home to send ransom money for their release or for the next stage of their journey across the Mediterranean by boat.
Footage of the migrants being physically abused is then sent to relatives by mobile phone. It is believed that the video that has emerged was posted on social media by migrants’ relatives who were sickened by what they saw.
One of the graphic videos, filmed by Libyan traffickers, shows a Sudanese man writhing on the ground and crying as burning plastic from what looks like a piece of PVC piping is dripped on his bare back by a gang member.
Another one shows four men, lying on their stomachs, being whipped and told to say their names.
A trafficker tells them: “Today you will die,” and tells a colleague: “Hit this dog.” The traffickers repeatedly shout “transfer the money!” to the terrified young men. One migrant begs his relatives: “Pay, please pay. Have you transferred the money?”
Mig r a n t s who have reached Sicily and the island of Lampedusa in southern Italy have told The Daily Telegraph that life in Libya is “hell.” After the clips were shared on social media, Libyan special forces managed to identify where the migrants were being held, tracing them to Qaddahiya, a village south of the coastal city of Sirte. The Libyan forces reportedly arrested four traffickers and set free eight Sudanese captives.
In a statement, the Libyan military condemned what it called “the horrific images of criminals deprived of humanity torturing labourers and burning them with fire.”
Most of the abducted men were believed to be from Sudan’s war- torn Darfur region and were in Libya seeking work before attempting the perilous sea journey to Europe.
In November, CNN obtained footage of African migrants being sold as slaves at a clandestine auction. In scenes reminiscent of the 19th century, when the slave trade was rife, auctioneers advertised a group of West African migrants as “big strong boys for farm work.”
The auctioneers referred to the migrants in Arabic as “merchandise” and sold them off for as little as US$ 400 each.
Libya has been mired in chaos ever since Moammar Gadhafi, the country’s longtime dictator, was ousted and killed in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011. It has two rival governments — a UN-backed administration in Tripoli, the capital, and a competing authority led by Khalifar Haftar, a military strongman based in the east.
Each is backed by different tribes and militias.