Burkina Faso recalls Libya envoy over ‘slaves’
OUAGADOUGOU: Burkina Faso has recalled its ambassador to Libya following reports that migrants were being auctioned as slaves there.
Burkina Faso’s Foreign Minister Alpha Barry announced the decision by President Roch Marc Kabore.
“The president of Burkina Faso has decided to recall the ambassador to Tripoli, General Abraham Traore, for a consultation,” Barry said.
He added that he had also “summoned the Libyan charge d‘affairs in Ouagadougou to express our indignation at these images that belong to other centuries – images of the slave trade”.
The move followed a broadcast by CNN of footage which it claimed showed an auction of men offered to Libyan buyers as farmhands and sold for $400 (R5 600), a grim reminder of the trans-Saharan slave trade hundreds of years ago.
Next week, African and European leaders will meet in the Ivory
Coast capital Abidjan to discuss migration and European efforts to deal with the matter in co-operation with Libya.
The North African country has long been a point of departure for tens of thousands of desperate refugees trying to reach Europe in search of a better life.
Hundreds have drowned after paying human smugglers to ferry them across the Mediterranean in unseaworthy boats.
Thousands more have been rescued by the Italian coastguard.
In a bid to stem the tide of refugees, the Italian and Libyan coastguards have joined efforts to prevent the refugees from reaching Europe. There have been repeated reports by human rights organisations and the UN about the mistreatment of African refugees in Libyan detention centres.
A study of mixed refugee and migrant flows by the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, found that around half of those travelling to Libya do so believing they can find jobs there, but end up fleeing on to Europe to escape life-threatening insecurity, instability, difficult economic conditions plus widespread exploitation and abuse. – ANA