This sequence of articles attracts on a yr of analysis performed on board the Ocean Viking, the civilian search-and-rescue send operated within the central Mediterranean via the NGO SOS Méditerranée. It explores the views of exiled other people in keeping with testimonies from 110 survivors who had been picked up whilst making an attempt the crossing from North Africa, in addition to team individuals’ studies and the researcher’s inventive collaborations on board the send.
That is the second one of a four-part sequence – learn section one right here and section 3 right here, and discover an immersive French-language model of the sequence right here.
Fragments of trips
In all, 21 sketches had been created within the workshops I performed onboard the Ocean Viking. They inform fragments of trips – routes that had been every so often clean however regularly fraught, ranging from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Syria, Palestine and Egypt.
From Dhaka to Zuwara: one in all ten sketches describing routes individuals had taken from Bangladesh.
Morgane Dujmovic, Fourni par l’auteur
Some trips had been very pricey however fast and organised, equivalent to the ones of a few Bangladeshi people who had travelled from Dhaka to Zuwara by way of Dubai in only a few days. Others stretched and intertwined over a number of years, adapting to encounters, sources, risks and the more than one wars and violence in the ones international locations crossed.
Amongst 69 individuals who answered to the questionnaire, 37.6% had left their nation of starting place the similar yr. However 21.7% were travelling for greater than 5 years – and 11.5% for over ten years. The longest trips started in international locations as numerous as Nigeria, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and, in 60% of the circumstances studied, Syria. As one respondent defined:
I fled the Syrian military. I spent 3 years in jail and torture, noticed horrible scenes. I used to be 18, I used to be no longer sufficiently old to are living or see such issues.
From Syria to Zuwara: one in all 11 sketches describing routes individuals had taken from the Center East.
Morgane Dujmovic, Fourni par l’auteur
2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015: the stable unfold of departure dates for those trips highlights the endurance of the conflicts that power migration world wide. Motivations to proceed those lengthy trips are regularly non-public ambitions for a greater lifestyles, equivalent to with the ability to find out about or assist circle of relatives left at the back of – as used to be defined via a tender Egyptian guy: “I am the only son in my family. My parents are old and they are worried I won’t make it.”
The survey made it imaginable to stipulate the varieties of fortify won and the risks encountered alongside the way in which. Along monetary sources from non-public financial savings or circle of relatives loans, just about 60% of respondents discussed the significance of immaterial sources equivalent to “advice from friends”, “psychological support from my husband”, or “information and emotional support from my niece”.
For some, the ideas won from family members appeared a very powerful at sure levels of the adventure: as one respondent defined, it equipped ethical fortify to “survive in Libya”. Conversely, every other player confided it were very important to cover the realities in their day by day lifestyles in Libya from their circle of relatives, so as “to hold on”.
Certainly, it used to be on this North African nation that almost all difficulties had been encountered: some of the 136 eventualities of threat described, part had been in Libya – when put next with 35.3% at sea, 8.8% within the particular person’s nation of starting place, and 5.9% at different borders alongside their migration routes.
When maps inform tales of exile, with Morgane Dujmovic. French-language video via The Dialog France, 2025.
‘Inhumane acts’ towards other people in exile
The atrocities concentrated on other people at the transfer in Libya are actually well-documented. They seem in a lot of assets together with NGO experiences and documentary motion pictures, in addition to direct testimonies from the ones affected.
The findings of an impartial UN Human Rights Council fact-finding challenge, revealed in 2021, certified those realities as crimes towards humanity. The record described “reasonable grounds to believe that acts of murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, persecution and other inhumane acts committed against migrants form part of a systematic and widespread attack directed at this population, in furtherance of a State policy. As such, these acts may amount to crimes against humanity.”
Throughout the find out about on board the OV, individuals had been in a position to outline, in their very own phrases, the character of the risks they’d skilled there. Their quotes conveyed subjective, embodied studies reshaped via feelings – but they had been a lot of and convergent sufficient to reconstruct what has been going down in Libya. The mechanisms of the reported violence had been systemic: punitive detention blended with torture, inhumane and degrading remedy, racial and sexual violence continued or witnessed. And those acts had been regularly cumulative:
Right through my first duration in Libya, I used to be imprisoned six occasions, tortured, crushed. I will be able to’t even consider the precise main points.
The acts of violence concerned perpetrators who had been, to a better or lesser level, institutionalised, together with coast guards, jail guards, mafias, militias and employers. They took place throughout all the nation (Benghazi, Misrata, Sabratha, Sirte, Tripoli, Zawiya and Zuwara had been essentially the most steadily cited towns), but in addition within the barren region and in detention websites at unknown places. Omnipresent used to be the possibility of violent and arbitrary detention, which generated a presumption of popular racism towards foreigners:
The racism I skilled as an Egyptian is simply unattainable: kidnapping, robbery, imprisonment.
Black other people felt specifically focused via such assaults. Amongst those that testified, an Ethiopian guy trapped for 4 years in Libya described his consistent sense of terror, connected to the repeated racist arrests he had continued:
Folks get abducted in Libya. They catch us and put us in jail as a result of we don’t have papers. Then we need to pay greater than US$1,000 to be launched. It took place to me 4 occasions: two weeks, then a month, then two months, and in spite of everything a yr. All as a result of my pores and skin color – as a result of I’m black. It lasted goodbye that my thoughts is simply too stressed out from worry.
Such racial discrimination used to be showed via the UN Human Rights Council record in 2021, which discovered “evidence that most of the migrants detained are sub-Saharan Africans, and that they are treated in a harsher manner than other nationalities, which suggests discriminatory treatment.”
Alternatively, the hazards of kidnapping and ransom would seem to spare nobody on Libyan soil. Koné described them as a generalised and systemic observe:
There’s a trade that many Libyans run. They put you in a taxi which sells you to those that put you in jail. Then they call for a ransom out of your circle of relatives to get you out. If the ransom isn’t paid, you’re made to paintings free of charge. In any case, in Libya you’re like products: they can help you input the rustic best to make you’re employed.
A mapping workshop held aboard the Ocean Viking.
Alisha Vaya/SOS Méditerranée, Fourni par l’auteur
A number of find out about individuals were stuck in those networks, and their analyses afterwards converged on one level: the Libyan revel in quantities to an unlimited machine of exploitation thru compelled labour.
The information reported fit the Global Labour Group’s definitions of “human trafficking” and “modern slavery”, and had been once more showed via the UN record, which famous: “The only practicable means of escape is by paying large sums of money to the guards or engaging in forced labour or sexual favours inside or outside the detention centre for the benefit of private individuals.”
In the long run, what Koné remembered maximum painfully used to be the sensation of disgrace:
I pity myself, my tale, however I pity the individuals who went to jail much more. In case your circle of relatives can’t pay the ransom, they should tackle money owed, so it’s an issue you set to your circle of relatives. Some other people went loopy as a result of it.
Mapping as testimony
Whilst the accounts of time spent in Libya had been all the time sour and regularly frightening, every so often past phrases, the find out about printed a robust want to endure witness to what occurs there – no longer just for most of the people, however for individuals who would possibly strive the similar adventure:
I need to say that during Libya, there are lots of girls like me who’re in an excessively tricky scenario.
I don’t have a lot to mention, except for that such a lot of individuals are struggling much more than I did in Libya.
I don’t advise any individual to return via this direction.
To accompany those tales, our mapping workshops aboard the OV served as a call for participation – a possibility to percentage studies with no need to place irritating occasions into phrases.
To start with, the collective mappings organised at the OV’s deck allowed individuals to deliver out the principle issues they sought after to deal with, consistent with 3 sequences: “our past”, “our present”, and “the future we imagine”. My position used to be to create a suitable framework for expression, information individuals towards available graphic tactics, and permit the sharing of creations thru their slow show at the deck.
A mapping workshop held aboard the OV.
Alisha Vaya/SOS Méditerranée, Fourni par l’auteur
Workshops had been then presented to small teams or folks within packing containers – areas that had been extra conducive to the confidentiality of intimate tales.
One of the most duties recommended via individuals used to be to constitute the zones of threat felt all over the migration adventure — the place Libya inevitably stood out. From those non-public pathways, a 2d workout used to be offered: describing the revel in of threat on the Libyan scale, development at the puts already discussed.
Contributors had been inspired to complement their sketched maps with non-public illustrations and narrative legends of their local languages, which have been later translated into English.
Ahmed’s revel in of Libya
On his map, Ahmed, a Syrian-born player, depicted “insecurity” in Tripoli, “bad treatment and extortion of money” in Benghazi, and “violation of rights” in Zuwara.
Libyan Enjoy #1: ‘One-and-a-half years’ via Ahmed. Translation via Amine Boudani and Rafik Arfaoui.
Writer equipped (no reuse)
His representation displays a scene of strange, popular crime: “the Libyan” capturing at “foreigners” conjures up the collective violence that Ahmed described as happening all throughout Libya. This emotional and participatory means served as a language for sharing tales that had been tricky to verbalise, and for mediating them.
Past what those drawings facilitated for the ones sharing their tales, they allowed myself and others gazing those violent pictures to contextualise them inside a fancy internet of things throughout time and geographical area.
Now learn section 3 on this four-part sequence, or discover an immersive French-language model right here.
