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In Libya’s Anarchy, Migrant Smuggling a Booming Trade

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In this file photo taken Friday, Nov. 29, 2013, African migrants cover themselves with blankets, after being captured by the Libyan Coast Guard while on a boat heading to Italy, in a detention center for illegal migrants in Abu Salim district on the outskirts of Tripoli, Libya. Libya’s chaos has turned it into a large and lucrative funnel attracting migrants desperate to make the dangerous sea voyage to Europe. With no central authority to stop it, business is booming, creating a vicious circle that only translates into more tragedies in the Mediterranean. (AP Photo/Manu Brabo, File)

In this file photo taken Friday, Nov. 29, 2013, African migrants cover themselves with blankets, after being captured by the Libyan Coast Guard while on a boat heading to Italy, in a detention center for illegal migrants in Abu Salim district on the outskirts of Tripoli, Libya. Libya’’s chaos has turned it into a large and lucrative funnel attracting migrants desperate to make the dangerous sea voyage to Europe. With no central authority to stop it, business is booming, creating a vicious circle that only translates into more tragedies in the Mediterranean. (AP Photo/Manu Brabo, File)

MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated Press
LEE KEATH, Associated Press

CAIRO (AP) — Libya’s chaos has turned it into a lucrative magnet attracting migrants desperate to make the dangerous sea voyage to Europe. With no central authority to stop it, business is booming, with smugglers charging ever more as demand goes up, then using the profits to buy larger boats and heavier weapons to ensure no one dare touch them.

It’s a vicious cycle that only translates into more tragedies at sea.

With each rickety boat that sets off from Libya’s coast, traffickers rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars. So assured are they of their impunity that they operate openly. Many even use Facebook to advertise their services to migrants desperate to flee war, repression and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.

And they are armed to the teeth, often working with powerful militias in Libya that control territory and hold political power.

One coast guard officer in Sabratha, a Libyan coastal city that is a main launch point for smugglers’ boats headed to Europe, said his small force can do little to stop them. Recently, he heard about a vessel about to leave but refused to send his men to halt it.

“This would be suicidal,” he told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the powerful traffickers.

“When you see smugglers with anti-aircraft guns mounted on pickup trucks on the beach, and you have an automatic rifle, what are you going to do?”

If any one factor explains the dramatic jump in illegal crossings into Europe, it’s Libya’s turmoil since the 2011 civil war that ousted longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. As the boat traffic increases, so do the horrific disasters. Over the weekend, a ship packed with migrants capsized off Libya, leaving at least 800 dead, the deadliest shipwreck ever in the Mediterranean. At least 1,300 people have died in the past three weeks alone, putting 2015 on track to be the deadliest year ever.

During his rule, Gadhafi struck deals with Europe to police the traffic, helping to keep the numbers down. In 2010, some 4,500 migrants made the perilous crossing from North Africa to Italy, the vast majority departing from Libya, according to the EU border agency Frontex.

In 2014, that number spiraled to more than 170,000.

By comparison, just under 51,000 took the second-most-popular smuggler route into Europe in 2014 — from Turkey into Greece and the Balkans. That was about the same as in 2008.

European authorities have been scrambling to find ways to deal with the crisis. One proposal is to fund camps in countries bordering Libya to house migrants before they reach its coast. Italian Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti said Wednesday there are contingency plans for military intervention against smugglers in Libya and that Italy is willing to lead an operation if it gets U.N. backing.

In the past year, Libya’s crumbling into anarchy has only accelerated. The country was plagued by multiple armed militias since Gadhafi’s ouster and death, but since 2014 what little political structure Libya had has collapsed. There are two rival governments, neither with any real authority, and each fighting the other on the ground. Local militias hold sway around the country, some of them with hard-line Islamist ideologies.

The Islamic State group has emerged as a strong and brutal force, with control of at least two cities along the central and eastern parts of the Mediterranean coast and a presence in many others. Over the weekend, it issued a video showing the mass beheading of dozens of African migrants, mostly Ethiopian and Eritrean Christians who were abducted as they tried to make it to the coast.

In the chaos, smuggling has “become an organized crime, with cross border mafias in possession of weapons, information and technology,” said the head of an independent agency that studies human trafficking and tries to help migrants in Sabratha.

Extensive cross-border smuggling networks organize different legs of the journey: First from the migrants’ home country to the Libyan border, then from the border to a jumping-off point on the coast, then onto boats for the Mediterranean crossing.

“We call the Mediterranean Sea ‘the graveyard,'” said the agency director, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from smugglers.

Along the way, traffickers strike deals with local militias to turn a blind eye to their movements. For example, smugglers bringing Africans across Libya’s southern border pay off the ethnic Tabu militia nominally tasked by the Libyan government to patrol the border, he said.

Smugglers have also raised prices, he said. Some have bought larger fishing trawlers that are ostensibly somewhat safer and can carry hundreds more migrants — and they charge up to 3,000 euros ($3,200) per person. They use the funds to buy weapons and technology — including satellite phones, GPS systems and 4-wheel-drive vehicles to move across the desert.

Migrants pay for each leg of the journey. It costs around $1,000 to get to Libya from Senegal and around $2,500 from Ethiopia, according to migration experts in those countries. But prices can vary. Italian prosecutor Maurizio Scalia, who investigates human trafficking, said the price from Ethiopia can reach as high as $5,000.

The cost for the trip across the Mediterranean depends on the type of boat and, on better vessels, which part of it the migrant is crammed into — the top deck or down below, according to several smugglers who spoke to the AP. They were reached through the Facebook pages where they advertise and gave only their first names for fear of prosecution by authorities in Tripoli.

A place on an inflatable boat — a more treacherous journey — can run $500, while relatively sturdier wooden or steel boats run from $1,000 to $2,000s, said one smuggler, Luqman, in the city of Zwara, another main launching point.

Mohammed, another smuggler in Zwara, said he runs boats to Italy — 15-meter (45-foot) wooden boats with a capacity of 200 people, or 18-meter ones with a capacity of 280. He insisted none of his boats have sunk, saying the danger was when smugglers overload their vessels, as they often do, sometimes to well over double capacity.

Each leg of the trip must be paid in advance. Migrants often scrounge together the money in their home country for the first leg, then stay for weeks in Libya working informal jobs to earn the money for the boat trip.

Scalia, the Italian prosecutor, said migrants’ families in Europe often help by sending funds through an underground money transfer system known as “hawala” that avoids the traditional — and traceable — banking sector. The system runs on networks of agents working on an informal honor system to process the cash payments.

In March, the European police agency Europol formed a task force to gather information from national law enforcement agencies in Europe to map out the criminal groups organizing the migrant influx, Europol spokesman Soeren Kragh Pedersen told the AP.

While sub-Saharan Africans are smuggled across the southern borders into Libya, Syrians, who make up a significant proportion of the traffic, usually come via Algeria, since they can fly there and enter without a visa, the smugglers said.

Luqman outlined the path his network uses: A migrant arrives at the airport in Algeria, then is taken by car to a border area called Tebessa, where the smugglers arrange the crossing into Tunisia. Then it’s a 250-mile (400-kilometer) journey along desert roads to the port of Zwara in Libya. Along the way, migrants may have to stay for days in a safehouse waiting for enough other migrants to arrive to make the journey, he said.

“The people who help the migrants cross from one country to the other don’t deal with small numbers but big numbers. So migrants can wait in one country for a couple of days or a week until the number is enough,” Luqman said.

___

Associated Press correspondents Vanessa Gera in Warsaw, Jan Olsen in Copenhagen, Krista Larsen in Dakar, Senegal; and Elias Meseret in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, contributed to this report.

Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Bay Area

Nigerian Bank Chief Killed in Helicopter Crash on Way to Superbowl XVIII

According to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Dept., the crash occurred near Nipton, on the edge of the Mojave Desert Preserve. The poor weather conditions — rain, wind and snow showers—may have contributed to the accident, although the investigation is not complete. All six aboard were killed. Herbert Wigwe, 57, founded Access Bank in 1989, and it became the country’s largest competitor, Diamond Bank in 2018.

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Herbert Wigwe with his wife, Chizoba Wigwe, left, and Abimbola Ogunbanjo, right. ENigeria Newspaper image.
Herbert Wigwe with his wife, Chizoba Wigwe, left, and Abimbola Ogunbanjo, right. ENigeria Newspaper image.

By Post Staff

The co-founder of one of Nigeria’s largest banks died with his wife, son and three others when the helicopter transporting them from Palm Springs, Ca., to Boulder City, Nev. to attend the fifty-eighth SuperBowl at the stadium outside Las Vegas crashed on Feb. 9.

According to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Dept., the crash occurred near Nipton, on the edge of the Mojave Desert Preserve. The poor weather conditions — rain, wind and snow showers—may have contributed to the accident, although the investigation is not complete. All six aboard were killed

Herbert Wigwe, 57, founded Access Bank in 1989, and it became the country’s largest competitor, Diamond Bank in 2018.

More recently, Wigwe was planning to open a banking service in Asia this year after making successful expansions to other parts of Africa, including South Africa, Kenya, and Botswana.

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu described Wigwe’s death as an ‘overwhelming tragedy.”

Oakland resident and Nigerian immigrant Kayode Gbadebo agrees with Tinubu. He met Wigwe in Nigeria but crossed paths with him in London in 2006. Wigwe, he said, “took risks.”

He was young and people thought he couldn’t do what he intended, which was not so much about money but community.

“He was more like Jesus in washing the feet of the poor– Wigwe was culturizing community,” Gbadebo said.

“There will never be another like him. This is a deep, deep loss” and he hopes everyone will eventually “be comforted.”

He was also disappointed that a replacement has already been named even before Wigwe is buried. “It is not reasonable. You don’t want a vacuum, but it’s” not fair to the family, Gbadebo observed.

Wigwe had also been working to solve the migration issues from African countries, believing that “investing in higher education was key to controlling mass migration, which “is destabilising countries across the world,” BBC News reported.

“We need to take a holistic approach to address global migration, starting with our traditional framework for international development,” Wigwe wrote.

To that end, according to BBC News, Wigwe was preparing to open Wigwe University in Niger, where he was from.

“The best place to limit migration is not in the middle of the Mediterranean or the English Channel or the Rio Grande. It is in the home countries that so many migrants are so desperate to leave,” he wrote, saying his university was an opportunity for him “to give back to society.”

Besides Wigwe and his wife, Chizoba Nwuba Wigwe, and one son, two crew members and Bimbo Ogunbanjo, former group chairman of the Nigerian Exchange Group Plc, were also killed in the crash.

According to Wikipedia, three other children survive Wigwe.

In his statement reported in People magazine, Tinubu described Wigwe as “a distinguished banker, humanitarian, and entrepreneur.”

“I pray for the peaceful repose of the departed and ask God Almighty to comfort the multitude of Nigerians who are grieving and the families of the deceased at this deeply agonizing moment,” the president said.

He added, “Their passing is an overwhelming tragedy that is shocking beyond comprehension.”

Besides feeling the tremendous loss, Gbadebo fears the disorder and greed that will follow. “It’s a mess,” he said.

People magazine, BBC News and Wikipedia were the sources for this report.

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Activism

No Valid Reason for Failing to Condemn Hamas’ Act of Terrorism

On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists crossed the Israel-Gaza border and indiscriminately slaughtered Israeli civilians in their homes. They killed nearly 300 young people at a music festival and took at least 200 hostages including 30 children. The atrocities they committed included massacres of families, abduction of the elderly and children, burning of babies and rapes of women.

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iStock image.
iStock image.

By Joe W. Bowers Jr.

California Black Media

OPINION

On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists crossed the Israel-Gaza border and indiscriminately slaughtered Israeli civilians in their homes.

They killed nearly 300 young people at a music festival and took at least 200 hostages including 30 children. The atrocities they committed included massacres of families, abduction of the elderly and children, burning of babies and rapes of women.

The horrific surprise attack deserves universal and unequivocal condemnation. President Joe Biden called what Hamas did “an act of sheer evil” and pledged to defend the lives of Israelis and Jewish Americans.

He said, “Let there be no doubt. The United States has Israel’s back. We’ll make sure the Jewish and democratic state of Israel can defend itself today, tomorrow, as we always have.”

Hamas killed approximately 1,400 people including 32 Americans. Citizens from 40 different countries including the United Kingdom, France, Mexico, and Thailand were killed or reported missing.

Hamas fighters breached Israel’s border defenses on the final day of Sukkot while soldiers were away due to the holiday and launched attacks on 22 towns outside the Gaza Strip. This security lapse has been described as a catastrophic failure of Israel’s intelligence agencies..

Hamas is an extremist Islamist militant organization that has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007. It is recognized as an Iranian-backed terrorist group by the U.S. and the European Union and has a long history of violence against Jews and Palestinians, the latter of whom they often use as human shields.

While there have been plenty of groups who have unequivocally condemned the massacres, there are a number who haven’t, including organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Black Alliance for Peace, Red Nation, and independent Black Lives Matter (BLM) chapters (excluding the national Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation).

The DSA San Francisco chapter put out a statement on Oct. 9 that said, “Socialists support the Palestinian people’s, and all people’s, right to resist and fight for their own liberation. This weekend’s events are no different.”

Student organizations at a number of universities and colleges in California signed a solidarity statement titled “Resistance Uprising in Gaza” from Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The statement attributes the violence of the Hamas attack to what it refers to as Israeli apartheid and occupation.

The SJP statement written by Bears for Palestine at UC Berkeley says, “We support the resistance, we support the liberation movement, and we indisputably support the Uprising.”  Essentially, these students are indirectly associating themselves with Hamas’ barbaric acts under the guise of “resistance.”

Signing the statement were 51 student organizations including those from Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Davis, UC San Diego, CSU Sacramento, and USC.

A statement signed by 34 Harvard student organizations said, “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”

Many university leaders, where these students are enrolled, have been guilty of failing to unequivocally condemn Hamas and for inadequately addressing their students’ expressed support for Hamas.

Several Stanford faculty members, including three Nobel laureates, condemned Stanford’s administrators’ weak response to acts of terrorism and the expression of pro-Hamas sentiments by students on campus.

Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005. It dismantled 21 Israeli settlements in the territory and handed them over to the Palestinian Authority.

The assault by Hamas on Oct. 7 was not an ordinary clash with Israel. Hamas’ actions resulted in the deadliest single day for Jews since the Holocaust.

While there are valid reasons for protesting Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and a real reckoning with the Israeli government on its policies is long overdue, nothing justifies Hamas’ attack.

Israelis who were killed largely had nothing to do with the conditions of Palestinians in Gaza. Some of the victims weren’t even Israeli — they were just tourists.

The students blaming Israel for the atrocities committed by Hamas have faced criticism. Some groups have withdrawn their endorsements because of the backlash aimed at them. Others have doubled down on their activism. SJP held a “National Day of Resistance” on several campuses.

Several CEOs have asked Harvard to disclose a list of members from the organizations assigning responsibility to Israel to insure they do not hire any of their members. A Berkeley law professor has also urged firms not to hire his students who have publicly blamed Israel for the war.

This California Black Media report was supported in whole or in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library.

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Activism

Oakland Deputy Mayor Kimberly Mayfield Meets Legislators in France

Dr. Kimberly Mayfield, deputy mayor of the City of Oakland, met with elected officials in France, including two members of the French National Assembly, and visited several educational programs, where she spoke with educators and students. Dr. Mayfield was able to visit France after a visit to London with the Hidden Genius Project and Oakland Natives Give Back to participate in Black History Month, which takes place in October in England. No public money was spent.

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Attending the meeting at the French National Assembly were (L to R): Kimberly Mayfield, Danièle Obono, Nadège Abomangoli, and Robyn Wilkes. Photo courtesy of Kimberly Mayfield.
Attending the meeting at the French National Assembly were (L to R): Kimberly Mayfield, Danièle Obono, Nadège Abomangoli, and Robyn Wilkes. Photo courtesy of Kimberly Mayfield.

By Ken Epstein

Dr. Kimberly Mayfield, deputy mayor of the City of Oakland, last week met with elected officials in France, including two members of the French National Assembly, and visited several educational programs, where she spoke with educators and students.

She met with Danièle Obono and Nadège Abomangoli, both members of the French Parliament, where they discussed many issues, including policymaking, racism, and immigration.

Dr. Mayfield was able to visit France after a visit to London with the Hidden Genius Project and Oakland Natives Give Back to participate in Black History Month, which takes place in October in England. No public money was spent.

Obono, has represented the 17th constituency of Paris in the National Assembly since 2017. A member of La France Insoumise (FI), she was reelected in the first round of the 2022 legislative election.

Abomangoli, also a member of La France Insoumise, was elected to Parliament for Seine-Saint-Denis’s 10th constituency in the 2022 French legislative election. She was born in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo.

The two leaders had lots of questions about current conditions in the U.S., Dr. Mayfield told the Oakland Post. “They wanted to know what it means for Oakland to be a sanctuary city, what my thoughts were on the upcoming presidential elections, and what I thought the prospects were for Biden and Trump,” she said.

They also wanted to find out about Black fraternities and sororities in the U.S., and what people did to mobilize the vote, so that voter suppression would not be able to determine the outcome of elections.

They pointed out that, as in the U.S., people in France are dealing with police brutality, and the handful of Black members of Parliament sometimes face hostility when they speak out.

With an extensive background as an education professor and administrator, as well as a public-school teacher, Mayfield said she was excited to have the opportunity to visit a primary and a middle school and had a wide-ranging conversation with young people at Réseau Etudiant, an after-school study program.

She also met with residents and elected officials from Gennevilliers, a small port city close to Paris, which is similar to Oakland in demographics and politics.

Zahir Meliani, a resident of Gennevilliers, made arrangements for Mayfield’s meetings at the Parliament and her visit to his city.

She was welcomed by Mayor Patrice Leclerc and one of his deputies, Celine Lanoiselée, and they toured areas of the town. They discussed some differences in city governance structures between France and the U.S. and explored the potential for exchange visits between young people in the two countries.

“I am excited to work on improving our cities and contributing to peace in the world by using the potential for online and in-person visits to learn from each other,” said Mayfield.

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