After a recent news story about the slave trade in Libya, people from all over the world are reacting to the horror. A news crew was able to go inside a real-time auction where people were sold and bartered. A modern-day slave market is a stark reminder of the crisis in Libya, but this is nothing new. Details and documentation have been released that support the facts that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was briefed on the deplorable conditions and slavery in Libya. The first hint of the issue can be traced back to emails dated in 2011.

It seems that the ill-treatment of Libya’s blacks and the migrant population is nothing new. There was a great deal of discussion about the abuse as at the hands of the Islamist Libyan rebels, who were fighting during the war that was powered by NATO. These violations were in direct retaliation for western interventions and left the area far worse off. The cries of genocide and slavery went unanswered as the United States focused on other issues.

Media information played a significant role in the United States not getting involved in stopping the racial issues in Libya back in 2011. The blacks that were being targeted were labeled as Gaddafi’s “African Mercenaries.” They were not victims of this war but instead the enemy. This made it much easier to ignore the murder and abuse of over one million black Libyans. These Libyans were viewed as being “… large pro-Gaddafi forces was that they were all mercenaries, mostly from black Africa, whose only motive was money.”

The idea that those that were most vulnerable to the abuse during the war became the enemy was pointed out to the public in 2012. Maximilian Forte, Associate Professor at Montreal’s Concordia University, published a book in 2012 about the issue. According to Professor Forte:

“Racial fear and xenophobia were at the very crux of the first public calls for Western military intervention, and were the basis for the first utterance of the need for a “no-fly zone” …The myth of the “African mercenary” was useful for the Libyan opposition, the NTC [National Transitional Council] and the militias, to insist that this was a war between “Gaddafi and the Libyan people,” as if he had no domestic support at all.”

After turning the million or so black Libyans into the enemy, it was OK to quietly ignore things like the emerging slave trade. The slave trade was a direct product of the 1998 Gaddafi policy that allowed large numbers of Africans to come into the country without Visas to work. This created a whole culture of workers that were paid very little and lived without documents. A by-product of this policy was the overall distrust and hatred towards black Libyans. They were no longer human but instead seen as a product.

As the Gaddafi policy disappeared, workers left in the country were targeted for abuse or even death. In August of 2011, nearly 30,000 blacks vanished in Tawergha. Almost the entire town was assumed dead after a NATO-backed group took over the area.

Tawergha was not the only area that saw violence that summer. Mainstream media covered the execution of 30 dark-skinned men. According to a news report from August of 2011:

“The rotting bodies of 30 men, almost all black and many handcuffed, slaughtered as they lay on stretchers and even in an ambulance in central Tripoli, are an ominous foretaste of what might be Libya’s future. The incoming regime makes pious statements about taking no revenge on pro-Gaddafi forces, but this stops short of protecting those who can be labeled mercenaries. Any Libyan with a black skin accused of fighting for the old regime may have a poor chance of survival.”

With years of murder and abuses seen by minorities in Libya, it is not surprising that the slave trade has not attracted much attention. The quiet sale of black labor does not sell as many books as pictures of “African mercenaries” being killed in battle. Since they have always been labeled the enemy on the ground, it seems OK with many that they are not treated as humans. They are being sold for deplorable uses.

News stories coming out of the slave market that held the sale shared the fact that many of these workers were sold for about $400. A human life and the ownership of a lifetime of work is worth pennies on the dollar in Libya. It seems almost a tradition by now after being ignored for all these years.