By
Batseba Seifu
Africa-Press – Eritrea. In 2025, as the African Union (AU) heralds a bold theme—“Justice for Africans and People of African Descent through Reparations”—a silent catastrophe unfolds just north of the continent. In Libya, Black Africans—migrants and citizens alike—are being brutalized, enslaved, and killed with impunity. The suffering is systematic, visible, and well-documented. What is conspicuously absent is the response of the African Union.
Recent horrors from Libya are not isolated events—they are a continuation of a well-established pattern. In February 2025, two mass graves were discovered in the desert city of Kufra. One contained 19 African bodies dumped on a private farm. The other, uncovered during a raid on a human trafficking site, revealed the decomposing remains of more than 30 Black migrants, including women and children. These were not accidental deaths—they were the result of calculated violence, fueled by state collapse and international complicity.
Weeks before the grim discoveries, over 600 Nigerien migrants were forcibly expelled into the Sahara by Libyan militias. They were abandoned without food or water, forced to walk for days in searing heat. Eyewitnesses reported children crying from thirst, women collapsing, and elders left to perish. Still, the African Union said nothing.
Pan-Africanism Betrayed
Libya once occupied a symbolic role in the African unity project. Under Muammar Gaddafi, it poured billions into the AU, promoted continental integration, and offered job opportunities to sub-Saharan migrants. Yet racism lurked even then. After Gaddafi’s fall in 2011, Libya descended into militia rule and chaos—conditions that rapidly weaponized Black bodies as tools for trafficking, extortion, and public scorn.
Today, Libya is both gateway and graveyard: a vital crossing for those seeking to reach Europe, and a prison for those who never make it. Militias, traffickers, and coast guards—often backed by European funds—have turned Libya into a deadly bottleneck where Black migrants are tortured, sold, raped, or left to rot in detention.
Meanwhile, Black Libyan citizens, including the Tebu and Tuareg communities, face entrenched racism and marginalization. In one particularly telling case, former Libyan minister Mabroukah Toughi—herself a Black Libyan—was arrested and publicly humiliated. No explanation. No justice. No response from the AU.
Europe’s Role: Profits over People
The European Union has prioritized migration control over human dignity. Billions of euros have been channeled into Libyan security forces with a record of abuse. Libyan coast guards trained by EU personnel have clear ties to militias and trafficking networks. One of the most scandalous episodes of 2025 saw Italy quietly release Osama Almasri Najim—a militia commander and suspected war criminal—back to Libya on a secretive intelligence flight. The move sparked global condemnation but no word from the AU.
The AU’s Silence is Complicity
Despite mounting reports of mass graves, slave markets, desert expulsions, and racial cleansing, the African Union has not held a single emergency summit on Libya. There has been no deployment of investigators, no condemnation of Libyan or European actors, no tangible protection offered to African migrants. The AU continues to issue glossy statements about reparations for colonial crimes—while failing to act against the modern-day enslavement of Africans on African soil.
In March, an online campaign titled “Friday for the Expulsion of Africans from Libya” circulated widely on Libyan social media. Human rights organizations sounded the alarm. The AU Commission remained silent.
This silence is not a matter of diplomacy—it is an abandonment of duty.
Justice Must Begin with the Living
The AU’s 2025 reparations agenda aims to acknowledge the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade, apartheid, and colonialism. But reparations are not only about the past—they must include urgent protection for present victims of systemic violence and racism. What credibility does the AU have if it cannot even speak against the open-air slave markets in Tripoli or the silent mass burials in Kufra?
This moment demands more than commemoration. It demands action.
A Continental Call to Conscience
If the African Union seeks to be more than a ceremonial institution, it must act now. That begins with:
• Convene an emergency summit on Libya focused on crimes against Black Africans.
• Deploy independent investigators to assess and document abuses.
• Impose targeted sanctions on Libyan officials and militias.
• Condemn European complicity in sustaining Libya’s violent migrant regime.
• Establish a continental migrant protection mechanism for Africans in transit.
Libya is a test of Africa’s moral spine. If Black lives truly matter to the African Union, they must matter in Libya. The AU must move beyond rhetoric and into action. Otherwise, its 2025 theme risks becoming a cruel irony—justice for the dead, silence for the living.
Africa is watching. The world is watching. Will the AU finally act?
moderndiplomacy
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