IN late March, as Libya’s civil war raged, loyalist soldiers forced Abu Kurke, a 23-year-old political refugee from Ethiopia, onto an inflatable boat with dozens of other African migrants and dispatched them from Tripoli’s port into the unforgiving waters of the Mediterranean.
The journey almost killed Mr. Kurke. After leaking oil, the boat went adrift between Tripoli and the Italian island of Lampedusa. A helicopter spotted it, and soldiers threw down a few bottles...
more »IN late March, as Libya’s civil war raged, loyalist soldiers forced Abu Kurke, a 23-year-old political refugee from Ethiopia, onto an inflatable boat with dozens of other African migrants and dispatched them from Tripoli’s port into the unforgiving waters of the Mediterranean.
The journey almost killed Mr. Kurke. After leaking oil, the boat went adrift between Tripoli and the Italian island of Lampedusa. A helicopter spotted it, and soldiers threw down a few bottles of water and gestured that help would come.
Hours became days. Stranded at sea, the boat encountered bad weather. Waves beat against the vessel, knocking two people overboard. Food and water soon ran out, and exhausted passengers began to die of starvation and thirst. The Italian Coast Guard was alerted and reportedly made contact with a warship in the area. Still, no help came.
After 16 days at sea, the boat washed up again off the Libyan coast near the besieged city of Misurata. Of the 72 passengers who had left Libya, only 9 survived — mostly by drinking rainwater and eating toothpaste.
Back in Libya, Mr. Kurke was detained by loyalist forces while trying to flee to Tunisia. They forced him onto yet another boat headed for Lampedusa. “I’m going to die,” he thought. This time, he made it.
The Arab Spring brought a sense of pride and hope to North Africa, especially in Tripoli, where celebrations in the newly renamed Martyrs’ Square drew thousands, their singing punctuated by celebratory bursts of machine-gun fire.
But for the more than one million African guest workers who came to oil-rich Libya seeking their fortunes, it has meant terror. Because Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s army employed many mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa, these innocent migrant laborers now find themselves singled out by ordinary Libyans and rebels who believe they are the enemy.
In Zanzour, an abandoned port outside Tripoli, forgotten refugees of the Libyan war live in a fleet of broken boats, masquerading as homes. Tarps and fabric had been stretched from the hulls to the ground, providing protection from the sun, but little else.
Elsewhere they are in scattered houses, locked up in makeshift jails, shot by rebels, or dead at the bottom of the Mediterranean — the uprising took everything of their former lives.
These images are from the week that I spent in Zanzour. A broken port where African migrants wait, vulnerable to rape, theft and murder.
« less
