Human Trafficking and Modern-Day Slavery
It was middle of the night, a violent storm agitating the Mediterranean Sea. Abdulrahman Sesay believed he was finally going to reach Europe when the boat he was in, loaded with 70 people jam-packed without life jackets, began bouncing from side to side, tossing bodies around. No one could see. The screams of terror filled the air. Within minutes the boat capsized. In the violent water, Sesay desperately looked for something to hold on to keep his head above. He watched hopelessly as four of the five friends with whom he traveled from Sierra Leone to Libya gave their last breath, swallowed by the angered sea. Only eight people out of 70 survived, he said, tears flooding his eyes even now, four years later, as he tells his story.
“We floated for six hours – I cried till I could cry no more,” he says. Towards the morning hours, a group of fishermen found them and brought them back to shore, in Libya, where it all started.
In 2016, when Abdulrahman Sesay attempted his Temple Run, approximately 5,000 smuggled migrants drowned in the Mediterranean without ever reaching Europe. More than 13,000 drowned in the Mediterranean between 2014 and 2019, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The beginnings of the Temple Run
After his harrowing experience in the sea, Abdulrahman realized that the migrant’s road to Europe passes through hell. He now shares his story with others, in hopes that Sierra Leoneans in search for greener pastures will learn from his mistakes. Human trafficking, he says, is a business in which you pay to be abused, dehumanized, and sold many times over. The traffickers build homes, buy cars, live a lavish life on the backs of the poor, many of whom end up dying in pain and torture trying to reach Europe.
According to the U.S. Department of State 2020 Human Trafficking Report, “the Government of Sierra Leone does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so.”
Sesay hails from Bo, southern Sierra Leone. In 2016 he found himself trying to survive as a musician, and a single father. Both of his parents were dead. But as he struggled to find food, he kept hearing stories of young men who succeeded in making the Temple Run, had lots of money and helped their families. So, Sesay decided to sacrifice everything and go on Temple Run too.
“They told me stories about better living condition in Europe and that no one struggles for something to eat or wear,” he recounted. So, Sesay and 15 of his friends gathered the money and decided to make the journey to Europe through Libya and across the Mediterranean Sea, popularly known as Temple Run.
The Journey
In August 2016, a few days after observing the holy month of Ramadan, Sesay and his friends boarded two vehicles to Guinea. From Guinea, they went to Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. There, a Sierra Leonean based in Libya, who is part of the trafficking network, arranged for them to be picked up by well-coordinated trafficking groups who took them through the desert all the way to Libya.
In Tripoli, which is the capital of Libya, Sesay and his friends, and hundreds of others, were asked to pay 600 dollars each to a Gambian trafficking group for the Mediterranean crossing. After payment, they were taken to a camp 50 miles west of Tripoli, in Sabratah, where they waited.
The trafficking networks are sophisticated. While Nigerians and Gambians are generally the agents for the traffickers, the Libyans are the owners of the boats necessary to cross the sea. “We pay to the Gambians and they pay to the Libyans,” Sesay explained.
“My life in that Libya camp was abnormal. I would go a week without washing. They treated us like prisoners. They put food in a big sack and we stood in a line where each of us would be asked to dip our hands and collect a hand full of food as they passed through the line,” he recounted with visible grief.
Modern Day Slavery
Sierra Leone enacted its Anti-Human Trafficking Act in 2005. For 15 years the country failed to convict anyone on human trafficking, yet hundreds and perhaps thousands of Sierra Leoneans were sold many times over across the continent.
According to the U.S. State Department 2020 Human Rights Report, “in previous years, traffickers reportedly bribed prosecutors not to prosecute cases, and bribed judges to dismiss cases; it is not clear whether this remained an issue.”
“Judicial inefficiencies, general corruption, and procedural delays prevented courts from holding traffickers accountable and diminished faith in the judicial system,” stated the report. Because of that, it concluded, the victims and their families accept payments from traffickers rather than pursue cases in court. It added that “in many cases, victims either did not agree to testify against their traffickers and prosecutors dropped the charges, or victims could not meet the travel requirements for court appearances and judges dismissed their cases.”
Human trafficking takes many forms in Sierra Leone. Aside from the Temple Run, in which the victims are mainly male, in recent years women have been equally victimized. Recruited for the so-called “domestic work” by illegal agencies, young Sierra Leoneans end up in Middle Eastern countries working in slave-like conditions, sequestrated, beaten, tortured and raped and, in some cases, driven to commit suicide.
Sesay’s Dream for Europe
Twice he attempted to cross the sea. Sesay described that traffickers use cheap boats, load them with as many victims as possible with no life jackets on, take them out in the sea in the middle of the night, and abandon them there betting that some rescuers from Europe will find them.
“Three days before the sea crossing, the traffickers asked who among us knew how to use a compass, and who could act as captain to control the boat,” he explained.
On the travel day, shortly before midnight, 135 people were called from the camp and loaded on a “balloon” inflatable boat, including women and children. The traffickers gave precise instructions: no one was to quarrel or move, otherwise the boat will lose balance and tip over. Shortly after leaving the shore, a Libyan Navy patrol spotted the boat and after allegedly failing to obtain a bribe, they towed the boat back to shore. This meant that Sesay and all the others lost the 600 dollars each. The boat-owning traffickers pocketed 81,000 dollars (810 million Leones), in one night.
Sesay called friends and family home to get more money. “I left Sierra Leone with 1,300 dollars and I ended up spending 2,500 dollars,” he said. The second call for boarding came a few days later. Traffickers offered a “VIP” wooden boat for 70 people, at 400 dollars a person. That would make the traffickers 28,000 dollars in one night. “Out of 16 Sierra Leoneans, only six of us were able to pay,” Sesay says. At midnight, the group of 70 was launched into the water, and that would be the last voyage for many of them.
About 45 minutes after leaving the shore, massive waves began battering the small, overloaded vessel. “The machine that moves with the boat stopped and the boat was taking water. Passengers in the boat started jumping into the sea,” Sesay begins recounting, but his voice is fading. Sesay still remembers the sounds, the voices, the water, the smell.
Most of the people on the boat disappeared under the water. Only he and seven others survived. Local fishermen found and transported them to the shore. When they reached out to the traffickers, the traffickers told them they were not allowed to return to the camp. “They didn’t want us to scare the other people at the camp with our bad experience,” Sesay said.
On November 16, 2016, out of money, and terrified, Sesay returned home to his country, after the Sierra Leone Embassy in Tripoli issued him emergency travel documents. Sesay paid for his air ticket.
Thousands drown every year
According to UNHCR, up to 240 people died in a shipwreck off Libya in November 2016. Rescuers recovered 31 survivors, but no bodies. In a separate incident, also in November 2016, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), reported 100 people were feared drowned off the coast of Libya after their smuggler abandoned them at high sea without a motor or life jackets.
Sesay lives his days drowned in regrets and trauma. “It’s horrible. Seeing how my friends died, such memory would always linger- I am not normal anymore, I am just trying to put myself together. I wish they bring those traffickers to justice because they are not doing it to help, they do it for the money,” he pleaded.
Dozens of human trafficking cases are not investigated
According to the Sierra Leone Police (SLP) Crime Statistics Report, 80 cases of human trafficking were reported to the police in 2019, a significant jump from just 28 reports in 2018. However, according to the U.S. State Department 2020 Human Trafficking Report, the Sierra Leone government reported investigating 30 cases of human trafficking in 2019, which leaves a gap of 50 cases that possibly remained uninvestigated or have been dismissed.
According to judiciary sources, there are currently 10 cases of human trafficking pending prosecution, which leaves 20 others at the stage of investigation many months later. Justice Ivan Sesay has been assigned exclusively to human trafficking cases, which bypassed the preliminary investigation stage and were sent directly to the High Court, for more expeditious process.
In February Justice Sesay convicted two Sierra Leonean women on human trafficking. They were part of a trafficking ring attempting to transport nine victims to Middle Eastern countries for exploitation in domestic servitude; the government sentenced one of the traffickers to 20 years’ imprisonment and the other to eight years’ imprisonment.
Mangeh Sesay, National Program Officer for IOM Sierra Leone, welcomed the two convictions, and described the justice system as the most important link in fighting human trafficking. “We need to create a concerted effort to fight this anomaly. We need to have a special court just like we do for rape,” Mangeh said. His call comes as the U.S. State Department’s report highlighted that “[j]udicial inefficiencies, general corruption, and procedural delays prevented courts from holding traffickers accountable and diminished faith in the judicial system.”
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