African Migrants Report Torture, Slavery In Algeria
Dozens of Africans say they were sold for labour and trapped in slavery in Algeria in what aid agencies fear may be a widening trend of abusing migrants headed for a new life in Europe.
Algerian authorities could not be reached for comment and several experts cast doubt on claims that such abuses are widespread in the north African country.
The tightly governed state has become a popular gateway to the Mediterranean since it became tougher to pass through Libya, where slavery, rape and torture are rife.
Amid a surge in anti-migrant sentiment, Algeria since late last year has sent thousands of migrants back over its southern border into Niger, according to the United Nations Migration Agency (IOM), where many tell stories of exploitation.
The scale of abuse is not known, but an IOM survey of thousands of migrants suggested it could rival Libya.
The Thomson Reuters Foundation heard detailed accounts of forced labour and slavery from an international charity and a local association in Agadez, Niger’s main migrant transit hub, and interviewed two of the victims by telephone.
“The first time they sold me for 100,000 CFA francs ($170),” said Ousmane Bah, a 21-year-old from Guinea who said he was sold twice in Algeria by unknown captors and worked in construction.
“They took our passports. They hit us. We didn’t eat. We didn’t drink,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “I was a slave for six months.”
Accounts of abuse are similar, said Abdoulaye Maizoumbou, a project coordinator for global charity Catholic Relief Services. Of about 30 migrants he met who were deported from Algeria, about 20 said they had been enslaved, he said.
In most cases, migrants said they were sold in and around the southern city of Tamanrasset shortly after entering the country, often by smugglers of their own nationality, he said.
Some said they were tortured in order to blackmail their parents into paying the captors, but even when the money arrived they were forced to work for no pay, or sold, said Maizoumbou.
One man told the Thomson Reuters Foundation he slept in a sheep pen and suffered beatings if an animal got sick or dirty.
“They would bring out machetes and I would get on my knees and apologise and they would let it go,” said Ogounidje Tange Mazu, from Togo.
The IOM in Algeria has received three reports this year from friends and relatives of African migrants held hostage and forced to work in the country. “It’s probably just an indication that it is happening. How big it is we don’t know,” said its chief of mission Pascal Reyntjens.
“What happens in Algeria surpasses what happens in Libya,” said Bachir Amma, a Nigerien ex-smuggler who runs a football club and a local association to inform migrants of the risks.
Migrants in Libya are often starved and beaten by armed groups, and there have been reports of “open slave markets” where migrants are put on sale, according to the U.N. human rights office.
Amma said he had spoken with more than 75 migrants back from Algeria, the majority of whom described slave-like conditions.
“NGOs don’t know about this because they’re too interested in Libya,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
In 2016, the IOM surveyed about 6,300 migrants in Niger, most of whom had returned from Algeria and Libya. Sixty-five percent of those who had lived in Algeria said they had experienced violence and abuse, compared to 61 percent in Libya. An estimated 75,000 migrants live in Algeria, the IOM said.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on July 25, 2017
A 19-year-girl of Indian Muslim heritage has been allegedly kidnapped, raped and murdered because she had begun a relationship with an Arab Muslim man.
The suspected so-called ‘honour’ killing happened in a £1.5 million London house, and the body of Celine Dookhran was found with the throat slit, The Timesreports.
She was discovered just hours after being reported missing by second suspected victim, whose throat had also been cut. The woman, in her twenties, alerted police from a hospital.
Ms. Dookharn had been bound and gagged before being driven the house in Coombe Lane West, Kingston, on Wednesday last week, it is alleged. She was allegedly violently sexually assaulted before being murdered at the address.
A post-mortem examination carried out on Friday gave the cause of death as an “incised wound to the neck”, police revealed in a statement.
Mujahid Arshid, 33, of no fixed address, appeared before Wimbledon magistrates’ court on Monday, charged with the murder, rape and kidnap of Ms. Dookhran. He is also charged with the rape, attempted murder and kidnap of the second woman.
Selected Comments:
Muslims look for any excuse to murder, rape, and pillage. They even hate each other.
Wait a second- a group allegedly invited in to promote (the nonsense) of diversity murders one of their own for preferring a little diversity in her own life? Priceless.
Muslims have never had any interest in diversity.
Pakistani Muslims,Indian Muslims ,Turks look down on Arabs as scum. Arabs regard Berbers and blacks as scum as do Pakistani Muslims, Indian Muslims and Turks. Those are just some of the facts of Islamic racism.
Muslims also HATE blacks so I find it amusing when BLACKS convert to it. Blacks are useful tools and EASILY manipulated with FEW
They give their goats more respect than they give their women.
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