It sounds like a scene from a history book — young Black men sold to the highest bidder, forced into labor, beaten, their wives raped, and others held for ransom. But this isn’t 1850. It isn’t Cape Coast. This isn’t a slave ship. Nor a plantation in South Carolina.
This is Libya. Right now.
Since the collapse of Ghaddafi’s oppressive dictatorship in 2011, Libya has descended into chaos, becoming a lawless corridor for human traffickers. Migrants and refugees — mostly Black ones from sub-Saharan Africa — seeking better lives elsewhere are instead intercepted, kidnapped, and auctioned off like livestock in makeshift slave markets.
And the world’s response. Largely silence.
These aren’t metaphors. CNN undercover footage in 2017 first revealed these actual auctions, with men sold for as little as $400. Survivors spoke of starvation, torture, forced labor, and sexual violence — horrors so common they’re expected.
Libya has become a modern hub in a centuries-old trade built on Black suffering.
Almost a decade after CNN first exposed the practice, the world, the U.N. and the West included, continues to turn a blind eye. Once again proving that Black bodies don’t mean anything to them unless they come with gold or cobalt.
Here are the specifics.
In April 2017, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) uncovered shocking videos and eyewitness accounts of open-air slave auctions in Sabha and other Libyan towns, where hundreds of African migrants from Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal and Gambia were sold for ransom or forced labor, often for just $325–$970 in U.S. dollars.
Survivors then described horrific torture, rape, electric shocks, and starvation. Many detainees were held in militia-run centers, forced to pay ransoms via calls to families abroad. Many died in cells.
By 2018, dozens of detention centers such as Bani Walid had become chambers for torture, ransom demands, forced labor, and sexual violence, with thousands detained at any time.
The United Nations quietly issued mild and wholly ineffective sanctions in 2018 against traffickers, including individual Libyan Coast Guard officers, for their roles in torture and human kidnapping and trafficking.
Libyan slave traders sent thousands into clandestine camps. Ransom systems remained systematic, with detainees forced to call home for money or face execution.
The Global Slavery Index estimated that in 2021 roughly 6.8 per 1,000 people in Libya (over 47,000 individuals) were living in modern slavery, including forced labor and forced marriage. Over 20 Militia-run detention facilities continued abusive practices while Libya’s government scored just 10/100 in modern slavery response.
A 2023 Human Rights Council report concluded that militia and state forces in Libya were complicit with the practice of slavery, themselves committing crimes against humanity, including sexual slavery of women and forced labor. And here’s the kicker. It’s all done with the EU’s knowledge and blind eye.
The European-Union backs and funds the Libyan Coast Guard, which continues intercepting migrants at sea only to send them to abusive detention camps, perpetuating the cycle.
Early 2025 saw sharp increases in migrant departures from Libya to Europe — over 28,000 arrivals in Italy alone — with traffickers upgrading operations and prices doubling. In May 2025, at least 16 migrants drowned near Libya; survivors were held in custody, highlighting the deadly transit through Libya.
The only reason this topic has resurfaced now isn’t because the world all of a sudden started caring about Black people. It’s because Trump’s proposal to send undocumented Venezuelans to Libya sparked legal opposition, citing Libya’s “torture, human trafficking, and civil war” conditions.
European, American and Arab human traffickers and enslavers of Black people have wreaked havoc on the continent for the better part of 600 years.
And yet here we are in the 21st century still dealing with it.
Slavery didn’t disappear. It just changed location. And it’s time we stop ignoring it.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Jeffrey Kass' work on Medium.