While the news of the war in Ukraine, the Donald Trump trial plot and the bankruptcy of the banks in the United States make the headlines of the mainstream media, a tragedy passes without attracting much attention in the eyes of the world: thousands of African migrants are sold in the new slave markets as cheap merchandise.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is aware of the existence of these markets in North Africa, but can do little.
After leaving their homes and traveling thousands of miles, men, women and children are sold and bought for labor, kidnapped for ransom from their families or used as sex slaves, the BBC reported.
An idea of the scale of the drama: approximately 300,000 people pass through Agadez, south of the Sahara desert, one of the main centers of the migration routes, every year on their way north to the Mediterranean coast.
Many die on the way, are abandoned by traffickers or fall into the hands of rival gangs who fight over the "merchandise."
Those who cannot pay their captors are killed or simply left to die of hunger and thirst. After surviving this ordeal, a new odyssey awaits those who are sold to Europe: they must face the crossing of the Mediterranean.
According to the United Nations, the central Mediterranean is one of the deadliest migration routes in the world. Every year hundreds of people lose their lives while attempting to cross it.
Upon arrival in Europe, they face a long stay in migrant camps, where they are treated in a discriminatory and inhumane manner.
This is not new, it has been happening for years, under the complicit gaze of some governments that benefit from trafficking, systemic racism and the indifference of others who prefer not to get involved in a drama that they consider alien.
The “luckiest” ones, those who manage to enter the European continent through "humanitarian" programs, in addition to facing an environment of rejection and intolerance, have to work long hours for very low wages and without a contract, or enter the underground economy, exposed to the social, working and living conditions imposed by this way of working.
Thousands of people who go in search of the European paradise die at its gates or end up in hell, without anyone lifting a finger to prevent it.
Translated by ESTI
