As the 4th anniversary of the eviction of our protest in Tripoli, Libya is approaching, I try to pen down what is in my throat and what I see in Europe so far. To the reader, I do not know what you will make out of this but I hope and I hope you will for once start to ask the right question.
I am writing this from Europe, the land that has fought so hard to keep me out but cannot seem to do without me. I am here now, not because I want to be, but because this place has made itself unavoidable. It has reached deep into my land, taken what it wanted, and left the rest in ruins. It armed the hands that tore my country apart, and when I tried to escape the wreckage, it built fences to stop me. Yet here I am, standing on soil that sees me as a problem, as a shadow that does not belong. I have carried this shadow with me, across deserts that seemed determined to devour me and seas that had no care for whether I lived or died. My feet have touched lands that promised nothing and delivered even less. And now, standing here, I wonder if the soil beneath me feels the weight of my steps or if it simply pretends I am not here at all.
I did not come to Europe as a conqueror. I came with nothing but the will to survive. I crossed deserts where the sun seemed determined to turn me to ash. I saw men buried by the sand and women stolen by hands that carried no mercy. I passed through Libya, that graveyard for Black dreams, where the old sickness of Arab racism continues to rot and fester, its stench filling the air.
Libya is a wound that refuses to close, a place where the past has never stopped bleeding. It is not enough to say that Libya is chaotic or lawless. That would be too kind. Libya is a machine built to grind Black bodies into dust. I saw men chained and sold like cattle, women raped until their spirits broke, and children used as though their youth were not sacred.
In Libya, I was tortured, starved, and detained in places whose names still haunt me: Tarik Al Sekka, Ainzara, Al Mabani, Mitiga, the list goes on. My crime was simple: I was neither wanted by Europe nor Libya. But while they rejected me as a human being, they embraced me as a tool. I was forced to work, to build the very roofs under which they snored without shame, to craft the shelters that hid them from Libya’s scorching sun. My hands made the walls, but my presence was denied within them. I cultivated the food they ate, but I could never share a bite.
In Libya, survival came at the cost of being erased even as I labored to sustain the lives of others. The militias do this with impunity, and why shouldn’t they? Europe pays them to keep us trapped, to break us before we reach its borders. The echoes of the past are loud in Libya. The auctions today carry the same cold calculations as those centuries ago: a man reduced to the strength of his arms, a woman to the curve of her back, a child to the potential of their years. And as I stood in the midst of it, I felt the weight of history pressing down, telling me that this is what Blackness has always meant to them, a body to be used, a soul to be ignored.
The cruelty of Libya is not new. It did not begin with its militias, nor with the fall of its leader. It has roots far older, far deeper. Arabs began the trade of African bodies long before the Europeans arrived with their ships. This history is not dead; it is merely dressed in modern clothes. Where once it was chains and whips, it is now detention centers and rubber boats turned back to shore. The tools may change, but the intent remains the same, to profit from Black suffering while denying its humanity. They taught the world that Blackness could be bought, that African lives could be stolen. And while centuries have passed, this disease has not left. It lingers in Libya, in the way Black migrants are treated like a resource to be consumed and discarded.
But Europe pretends it has no part in this. It looks at Libya and calls it a tragedy, as though it were not the architect of the nightmare. Europe funds the militias, builds the detention centers, and calls this arrangement “border control.” It condemns the violence in speeches while handing out money to those who carry it out.
Libya is Europe’s creation, its dark secret, the hell it built to keep its hands clean. The journey from Libya to Europe is not just a passage of hope; it is a negotiation with death. Each wave of the Mediterranean carries the weight of our desperation, our stolen futures. It is a reminder that survival is not a triumph but a mere delay of the inevitable.
They call it policy, but it is cruelty dressed in bureaucracy. They sign agreements with the very men who trade in our pain, offering money to stop the boats while closing their eyes to the chains. Europe holds its head high at summits and conferences, speaking of human rights while funding the destruction of human lives. And yet, they dare to wonder why we keep coming.
And yet, here I am in Europe, alive but not free. I crossed the Mediterranean not because I believed in Europe’s promises, but because I have no other choice. This land does not want me, but it needs me. My hands pick its fruit, my sweat builds its homes, my labor feeds the machine that calls itself a civilization. I am the worker it cannot do without, but I am also the threat it cannot bear to see. Each day here is a reminder that I am both visible and invisible. They see my hands when they need them, but never my face. I have worked in fields under the same sun that once threatened to kill me in the desert, only to be paid in whispers and told to leave before the real residents arrive. On the streets, their eyes follow me not with curiosity, but with suspicion, as though my presence itself were a crime.
Europe is sick with its own history. It fears me because I am the proof of its sins. It looks at me and sees the lands it pillaged, the people it enslaved, the blood it spilled. It calls me an invader to distract itself from the truth: I am here because it was there. My journey is not an act of trespass—it is the consequence of Europe’s greed.
But Europe’s sickness runs deeper than fear. It needs me even as it hates me. It depends on the migrant, on the refugee, on the Black body, to keep its systems alive. From the vineyards of France to the olive groves of Italy, from the construction sites of Berlin to the cleaning crews in London, it is our hands that keep Europe running. They call these jobs unskilled, but without them, their societies would crumble. The irony is sharp: they cannot build their world without us, yet they insist we do not belong in it. And so, it tolerates me just enough to use me. I am necessary, but I will never be welcome.
To live as a Black migrant in Europe is to walk a line between survival and disappearance. It is to be seen as both indispensable and disposable. My presence is tolerated only in silence, only as long as I do not remind Europe of what I truly represent. I am not just a laborer; I am a mirror, reflecting everything this continent would rather forget.
Libya taught me what it means to be dehumanized. Europe teaches me what it means to be erased. The so-called asylum system in Libya and Europe is a failure, but not by accident, it was never meant for the Black African child. Its origins were forged during the fateful displacement of Eastern Europeans in a Europe ravaged by its own wars. When those wounds were bandaged and healed, and the system was no longer needed, it turned its arrow towards the African child, pretending to offer refuge and human rights. In reality, it is nothing more than a containment machine, a factory of despair disguised as compassion. These containment machines, led by the UNHCR and IOM, work tirelessly to ensure that those who dare to covet European soil will never taste it. And if they do, it will only be after war, man-made-poverty, and betrayal have broken their bodies and spirits.
Migrants captured at sea by militias funded by Europe and detained in buildings funded by the same agency while UNHCR pretends to give hope.
The refugee camps of Chad, Niger, and Libya are not sanctuaries; they are warehouses for lives deemed unworthy. They are prisons in all but name, designed to keep the Black migrant at bay, far from Europe’s gilded borders. For those who brave the Mediterranean and step onto European soil, another system of dehumanization awaits. Here, the migrant is refined, like maize ground into fine flour.
This process extracts from him what Europe needs: his labor, his strength, his compliance to a culture he will never truly belong to. If he fails to meet these criteria, he is problematised and discarded, left to rot in so-called accommodation centers, where he waits not for refuge but for judgment. Years pass as Europe debates what portion of humanity he deserves, and even when granted, this humanity is fragile, a mere document that dissolves like paper in the rain, taking his life with it.
Resistance is not tolerated. Those who refuse to surrender their dignity are marked for deportation, sent back to the “barbaric/shithole” lands that Europe deems unworthy of life but essential for its own survival. Africa, the continent that nourishes Europe with its resources and its people, is treated as both a curse and a convenience. This is not asylum; it is a system built to contain, exploit, and discard.
I am here, but not here. I am needed, but not wanted. And yet, there is solidarity, fragile, hesitant, and scattered. It exists in the spaces between the cruelty, in the quiet acts of kindness that remind us that humanity has not been entirely extinguished. We cannot deny this solidarity, but we must also question it. For those who extend it, whether as individuals or collectives, are themselves the sick products of what the Arab and European people have done. They imagine a rebirth, a new identity for Europe, one where the scars of history can begin to heal. But this vision remains fragile, tangled in the ego and self-identity that they struggle to untangle. It is a flicker of hope, but one too faint to light the way. I am both a tool and a threat. This solidarity, though well-intentioned, often carries the weight of guilt rather than the strength of true accountability. It is a solidarity that offers bandages while avoiding the scalpel needed to cut out the disease.
This is the reality of being a Black migrant in 2025. It is not a life, it is a constant negotiation with a system that was designed to destroy me.
And yet, I am still here. My survival is an act of confrontation. My breath is resistance. They cannot erase me because I will not let them. I write these words not to plead for understanding or mercy but to lay bare the truth. Europe is not a safe haven for the African child. It is a disease that hides behind its wealth and its monuments, a system built on the backs of those it refuses to acknowledge.
I do not know what justice looks like, but I know it is not this. I know it is not chains in Libya or walls in Europe. I know it is not a world where Blackness is treated as a commodity. But until justice arrives, I will continue to survive. For every Black migrant who has made this journey, survival is not just an act of endurance, it is a declaration. It is proof that we are more than what they take from us, more than the systems they have built to break us.
Europe may deny us dignity, but it cannot take our humanity. That is ours to keep, ours to guard, ours to pass on to those who come after us.
And for those who still walk through the deserts, who still sail across the seas, who still dream of air, I say this: we are not invaders. We are the inheritors of what was stolen from us. We are here because they were there. And we will not disappear. But survival is not enough. We must dream of more than just endurance. Justice must be more than a word spoken in comfortable rooms; it must be action that breaks chains and builds bridges. It must be reparative, addressing the wounds of history, and transformative, reshaping the systems that perpetuate these injustices. Justice cannot be charity, it must be a reckoning.
It must be a justice built by the hands of those who have survived. For us, justice is not an abstract ideal, it is the daily act of standing up, of speaking out, of refusing to vanish. It is the solidarity we find in each other, the light we share even in the darkest places. It is the knowledge that though they tried to erase us, we are still here, and we will not be silent.
Until then, we will hold each other up, as we always have. For even in the darkest corners of this world, we find light in each other’s strength.David Yambio, migration activist and founder of Refugees In Libya
