IT is 2017, and slavery still alive and well. I know what we are taught as secondary school students in the English-speaking Caribbean. According to the National Archives of the United Kingdom, slavery was abolished on August 1, 1834, but only children under the age of six were freed immediately under the terms of the 1833 Emancipation Act. Slaves in the Bahamas and Antigua were also freed at this point. All other former slaves were bound, as apprentices, to their former masters… For this reason, 1838 is often considered to be the date that slavery was abolished in the Caribbean.

Like many others, I am sure, armed with this knowledge that this great scourge of humanity had been abolished, I grew up believing that slavery did not exist anywhere else in the world; that it was a thing of the past, and that it would never be allowed to happen to anyone else. It was important for me to believe this as a child of African descent, because, to this day, it is difficult for me the contemplate the Middle Passage; that once proud African men and women were made to stand on blocks and auctioned off like cattle, or worse, rendered almost inanimate by resigning to their fate to be treated as less than human.

Surely, nothing like this could ever happen again, right? It is impossible in this modern world for there to exist auctions for the precious commodity of human life, right? If you think that, then you are just as wrong as I was. Casually looking through Instagram stories, I came across the live video of what looked like protest action teetering on the brink of violence in Paris. It was captioned in the bright cartoon-like font often used in Instagram stories, “Free the people”, “Why Black people protest in France” and “To read more #swipeup”.
So, swipe up I did. What I had stumbled upon, according to the NewZulu.com news site, was a clash of protesters with riot police on the Champs-Elysees Avenue in Paris on November 18, 2017 during a march against “slavery in Libya”.

SLAVERY IN LIBYA?
A march against slavery in Libya? I was flabbergasted, and immediately looked up the story. What I found was that CNN, in August 2017, received a video clip of what appeared to be a slave auction. This video has been published, and can be found at https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/11/17/africa/libya-slave-auction-investigation/index.html.
In it, a man stands as members of an unseen audience bid on the right to own him. I am immediately sickened. I have spent my adult years avoiding movies about African slavery. But this is no movie. This is real-life, modern-day slavery.

CNN reports that one of the unidentified men being sold in the grainy cell-phone video is Nigerian, and that they travelled to Libya to verify the video, and to go undercover in October. That undercover report unearthed that there are at least one or two slave auctions every month. The victims are often refugees fleeing war-torn countries or economic hardships, and seem to have accepted the loss of their humanity as they have no home to return to, no food, and nowhere to go. According to CNN, a recent clampdown by the Libyan coastguard means fewer boats with refugees are making it out to sea, leaving the smugglers with a backlog of would-be passengers on their hands. So the smugglers become masters, and the migrants and refugees slaves.

It occurs to me that international policy has, for many years, been front-lining the issue of human trafficking. It is a more palatable term, but its consequences for those caught up in its net are no less horrific. To confront that fact means we must accept that human trafficking is modern-day slavery. Just like what is going on in Libya might seem so far away that it has no meaning to us, so, too, can the term human trafficking seem for those who can’t imagine how anyone can be tricked into being sold into a life of servitude, semi-slavery or slavery. Article 3, Paragraph (a) of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons defines Trafficking in Persons as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.”

UNIDENTIFIABLE VICTIMS
That means that among us there can be unidentifiable victims. That teenager originally from a rural community who does not go to school but works in your neighbour’s home; that Spanish-speaking young woman that works at the clandestine strip club; that young man from the hinterland who now participates in commercial sex work; and that strong young man who works for little or no money to pay off a debt owed by his family can all possibly be victims of modern-day slavery.

According to the United States Department of State, as reported over the last five years, Guyana is a source and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labour. Women and children from Guyana, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Suriname, and Venezuela are subjected to sex trafficking in mining communities in the interior and urban areas. Guyanese nationals are subjected to sex and labour trafficking in Jamaica, Suriname, and other Caribbean countries. Some police officers are complicit in trafficking crimes, and corruption impedes anti-trafficking efforts.

According to the 2017 report by the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, Guyana has made significant progress in fighting this scourge. The report states, “The Government of Guyana fully meets the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. The government made key achievements during the reporting period; therefore, Guyana was upgraded to Tier 1. The achievements included approving the 2017-2018 national action plan for combating trafficking in persons; increasing the number of investigations, prosecutions, and convictions; and identifying and assisting more victims for the second year in a row.”

This is important progress, but there is still much more that needs to be done. Is this an issue that the average citizen cares about? Can the ordinary Guyanese recognise slavery, if it was staring them in the face? Often, many of the scenarios that I have described are so normalised that we will easily observe them and never bat an eyelid. Further, we must ask ourselves how do we improve the ability of potential victims and victims to recognise what is happening to them, though it doesn’t look like the video of the man on the block in Libya, is no different, in the sense that it denigrates their humanity, exploits them, and removes or limits their right to freedom. How do we increase accessibility to help and protect and improve a victim’s willingness to seek that help? These are all expensive questions, with difficult and complex answers, but answer them we must.

Abolition will take a collective, comprehensive international approach that never takes for granted that there won’t always be people who will have the means, and ruthlessness needed to own another human being. The Government of Libya has launched a formal investigation into the slave auctions in the country following the CNN report highlighting the importance of investigative reporting, and the role of the media. They are an important stakeholder here in Guyana. Action-inducing content can effect change, not only in the actions of public officials but in the conduct of average citizens, who themselves must be engaged at the preventative and reporting levels.

I stand in solidarity with those Africans who are today being held in captivity, but I cannot be moved by their plight and not be moved to action by those who might be at risk or at risk in my own country. Let’s resolve to pursue abolition in every way that we can.