\n France on Wednesday called an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council over slave-trading in Libya as President Emmanuel Macron blasted the auctioning of Africans as a crime against humanity.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"France decided this morning to ask for an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss this issue,\" Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told parliament.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We are doing it as a permanent member of the Security Council. We have this capability and we are using it.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Macron said the auctions, captured in shocking footage aired by US network CNN, were \"scandalous\" and \"unacceptable\".\n<\/p>\n
\n \"It is a crime against humanity,\" he said after meeting with African Union chief Alpha Conde in Paris.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I hope we can go much further in the fight against traffickers who commit such crimes, and cooperate with all the countries in the region to dismantle these networks.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n CNN aired footage last week of an apparent auction where black men were presented to North African buyers as potential farmhands and sold off for as little as $400.\n<\/p>\n
\n The video prompted a wave of condemnation, including from African stars such as Ivorian football player Didier Drogba.\n<\/p>\n
\n But the European Union -- where Macron is trying to carve out his influence -- has also been criticised for cooperating with the Libyan coastguard in seeking to block migrants from leaving.\n<\/p>\n
\n The UN this month deplored an EU policy of helping the Libyan authorities intercept migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean and return them to \"horrific\" prisons in Libya.\n<\/p>\n
\n Guinean president Conde on Wednesday also criticised Europe's cooperation with the Libyans.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The refugees are living in extremely bad conditions,\" he said. \"Our European friends were not right to ask Libya to keep immigrants (in detention).\"\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Inhuman' -\n<\/p>\n
\n The AU leader said he was \"in contact with all leaders\", adding: \"We are trying to find a solution, even if it means bringing all of our citizens home.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein this month accused the international community of turning a \"blind eye to the unimaginable horrors endured by migrants in Libya\" and called the EU's policy \"inhuman\".\n<\/p>\n
\n AFP spoke to a number of black African men in Cameroon this week who reported being slaves in Libya, which descended into civil war after the Western-backed overthrow of dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"It was total hell,\" said Maxime Ndong, one of 250 migrants who arrived in Cameroon on Tuesday night on a plane chartered by the International Organization for Migration to take people home.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"There is a trade in black people there. People who want slaves... come to buy them,\" he told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"If you resist, they shoot at you. There have been deaths,\" added Ndong, who spent eight months in Libya.\n<\/p>\n
\n Another migrant, 22-year-old Sanogo, said he had been caught by people who said they were police before being sold to a slave trader. He was then forced to work on a tomato farm.\n<\/p>\n
\n Macron has been pushing for a solution to the chaos in Libya, organising a meeting between its rival leaders in Paris in July at which they agreed a conditional ceasefire and elections for next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
France on Wednesday called an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council over slave-trading in Libya as President Emmanuel Macron blasted the auctioning of Africans as a crime against humanity. \"France decided this morning to ask for an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss this issue,\" Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-35404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n