The jury of this seventh edition has awarded Mexican photojournalist Narciso Contreras, for his work : “Crossing Libya: The human marketplace”.
The present report narrates the brutal reality of human trafficking framed in the complex tribal society of the post-Gaddafi Libya, laying bare an unfolding humanitarian crisis in which illegal migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are at the mercy of militias who exploit them for financial gain. Held in detention centres for illegal migrants, they are subjected to inhuman conditions including overcrowding, lack of sanitation and vicious beatings.
The report follows the journey taken by migrants crossing borders deep into the Sahara Desert along to the trafficking pipeline to the main rescue zone off the Libyan shore, at the international waters. Framed by sectarian violence, corruption and bureaucracy this report circumnavigates the official channels and cultivates its own way contacting militiamen, smugglers, tribespeople and NGO’s carrying rescue operations in the Mediterranean which enabled it to get a close view to the reality of trafficking across Libya.
The report aims to show how, instead of being a place of transit for migrants on their way to Europe, Libya has actually become a trafficking market where people are bought and sold on a daily basis, providing a glimpse of the complex and horrifying context anonymous migrants face.
An illegal African migrant is pictured downcast on the Tajoura shore after having been arrested from the Mediterranean Sea by the Libyan coastguard in the west of Libya.
Illegal female migrants queue in the prison yard as they are loaded onto buses to be transferred to another detention centre, after having been sold by the militia group ruling the Surman detention camp in the west of Libya.
A mentally-ill Sub-Saharan illegal migrant in isolation in one of the Surman detention centers for illegal migrants on the west coast of Libya.
Sub-Saharan illegal migrants await to be loaded onto a four wheel drive truck as they were smuggled across the border from Niger into Libya, in the Sahara Desert.
Tebu militiamen are pictured at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Qatroum in the south of Libya.
Sub-Saharan illegal migrants sit at a crossroad as they queue for daily job in the streets of Sabha City, Libya.
A mafia teenagher exhibits his gun as he arrives at a crossroad looking for migrants (not pictured) queueing for daily job in the streets of Sabha, Libya.
Bundles of bills confiscated by intelligence police officers during a raid against smugglers in Tripoli, Libya.
Sub-Saharan illegal migrants and refugees are pictured begging for their release in the Zawiyah Detention Centre. The Centre's Director (not pictured) stands in front of the cell, threatening to beat them with a stick if they do not calm down, leading to panic on the part of the detainees.
Sub-Saharan illegal migrants and refugees reach through the window of a cell in the Garabuli Detention Centre, pleading for water, cigarettes and food.
An illegal migrant from West Africa named IBRAHIM MUSSA writhes in pain from terminal stomach cancer as his friend breaks down in tears while they are being transferred from a Surman detention centre in Libya.
A vigilante group carries out surveillance operations on the Zawara shore, looking for the corpses of illegal migrants and refugees, which have been washed up by the tide during the night. Two-hundred and twenty-six bodies of illegal migrants, asylum seekers and refugees were washed up on the Zuwara and Sabratah shores the week after their boats sank in the Mediterranean. Twenty-six pregnant women and one toddler were among the dead.
The bodies of dead migrants, collected from the Zawara shore by a vigilante group, are lined up for burial at an improvised graveyard in Abu Kammash, west Libya.
An Illegal female migrant waits with a group of women to be transferred to another detention centre, after having been sold by the militia group ruling the Surman detention camp in the west of Libya.
A group of Sub-Saharan illegal migrants and refugees are crowded into one section of the Zawiyah Detention Centre, a warehouse-like facility holding as many as 2,000 detainees at any one time, making it the largest of its type on Libyan soil. The Centre serves as a distribution facility in the human trafficking supply chain, and from here inmates are re-sold to other militias on the west coast of Libya.
The corpses of illegal Sub-Saharan migrants lie in the morgue of Sabha City after having been collected from the streets and the desert during the previous days.
Asamoa Shia (Ghana, 25 yo) weeps aboard the Aquarius ship after was rescued with his wife and another 120 migrants off the shore of Libya. While working in Libya, he was arrested at home during a night raid carried out by an armed militia in Tripoli. Accordingly, with his testimony he spent over two months in a prison camp from where he managed to escape with other 15 migrants. He was smuggled in a dinghy boat from Sabratah in the west coast of Libya.
The corpses of illegal Sub-Saharan African migrants lie at the bottom of a dinghy boat after being recovered by Santa Lucia merchant ship in the Mediterranean Sea. Four rubber dinghies and some 500 survivors in total were being pulled to safety on that day.
Migrants rescued in the Mediterranean are transferred onto the Aquarius ship (right) from Juventa ship (left) after search and rescue operations conducted by aid organizations at international waters.
Narciso Contreras is an award winning photojournalist born in Mexico City in 1975. Since 2010 he has been covering a variety of issues and topics in Southern Asia and the Middle East, leading him to focus his work on the humanitarian cost of conflicts, economics and wars. His work intends to contribute building our visual memory of the world he testifies.
He is currently photographing the migrant’s crisis in North Africa as part of a long-term project of documentation based on the worldwide conceived phenomenon of a “massive human displacement”. It’s first chapter “Libya: a human marketplace” documents the human trafficking and slavery network operating in Libya.