David Yambio

Deliberate reduction of human beings into nothingness. For years, this is what we have fought to make visible: EU-funded concentration camps in Libya where enslaved “migrants” and “refugees” are detained en masse, shoulder against shoulder, body against body, with barely enough room to turn or sit upright. Exhaustion, dehydration, disorientation, heat, suffocation, darkness, sheer collapse—you name it. One does not need visible blood for violence to be present. Sometimes violence is architectural, administrative, and above all a decision to place hundreds of enslaved people in a room never meant to contain them and then call it “migration management.” My outrage comes from the fact that such scenes have become normalised both in Libya, Europe and around the globe. The world has slowly learned to consume the dehumanisation of “migrants” as recurring theme instead of evidence of ongoing crimes against human beings that concerns all of humanity. And while this reality is already unbearable, this morning a document leaked to @StatewatchEU confirmed that the EU has begun collaborating with Haftar’s forces in eastern Libya on “migration control.” The result will be worse than what is happening in this footage. This is a condition that no court, parliament, humanitarian institution, or democratic society should tolerate for a single hour, let alone for years that has passed.

Here is my statement following @Frontex refusal to allow its Executive Director, Hans Leijtens, to engage in a direct public debate with me in the context of the documentary The Gates of Europe, in which I participated. Since the beginning of 2026, more than 2,400 people have systematically murdered while seeking protection at Europe’s borders. Yet, at a time when Frontex’s record demands greater public scrutiny, those who have lived through and documented the consequences of its operations are being denied the opportunity to challenge its director directly. “What we demand now is public accountability, not another private audience with the man leading an agency of death.” My door remains open — to public accountability. This is not about me, David Yambio, alone, but about the thousands of people who have been systematically murdered by Europe’s deadly border policies, and the thousands more who will consequently die if agencies such as Frontex are not held accountable. With this, I ask you all to amplify this issue. cc: @De_Zwijger | @omroepvpro | @eblankevoort | @elsjevD | Tomas Kaan | @pro_europa | @Tineke_Strik | @universiteitleiden @front_LEX @ABoatReport @abolishfrontex @RefugeesinLibya @LeijtensFrontex @EUCourtPress

Who gets to ask why people are forced to flee — and who gets to demand accountability for the conditions that made exile necessary? “The Master” is not one person. It is an inherited structure of power of the collective West— one that has changed its vocabulary across generations while continuing to draw borders, extract, categorise, contain, detain, deport and determine whose movement is permitted and whose becomes a “crisis.”

The World Social Forum in Cotonou has become a painful lesson in what happens when a social movement abandons the courage to confront an authoritarian power. Hundreds of us; African and international delegates spent our precious resources and took our time and risks to travel to Benin, only to find ourselves stranded without venues, protection or even a collective political response. This is a shameful betrayal of Pan-African solidarity and of the hospitality that should accompany such a gathering. The organisers repeatedly insisted they wanted to be “a constructive force, not an opposition.” But a social movement that asks permission to speak has already surrendered the very purpose for which it exists. The irony could not be greater for me because we came to discuss shrinking democratic space, border violence and migration externalisation. Instead, the Forum itself became a victim of state suppression. What saddens me most is the missed opportunity for Africa. Hosting the World Social Forum on African soil should have amplified grassroots voices. Instead, the combination of state hostility and organisational passivity has projected weakness where courage was much needed as our world now requires of us. Yet, as this photograph shows, we at the Migration Village chose to self-organise ourselves. We refused to be silenced or intimidated. Social movements have never advanced because governments granted them permission but because ordinary people organised anyway. For me, this has become the “World Social Flop.”

When I was in Libya, I hoped that, if death were to be imposed upon me, it would occur at sea, because the sea was the only place where many of us found dignity: the dignity to die for what we believed in, for what we imagined, and while doing everything we could to make our way out in search of protection and safety. Isn’t this an even greater tragedy for our humanity—that so many would rather be swallowed by the sea than succumb at the hands of violent militias armed by Europe and met with the silence of the entire Africa? This image belongs to a person seeking protection who was stranded at sea with others for 14 days. His body and those of two others were recovered off the coast of Benghazi a few days ago. He is the alleged “invader.”

« Les centres de détention libyens sont, par définition, des camps de concentration » politis.fr/articles/2026/07/…

In Lampedusa, while we commemorate the dead, let us also take responsibility for the living—to protect their rights, their dignity, and their humanity. While many see Lampedusa as the starting point, I remind the world to look beyond the sea, to look towards the Libyan hell made possible by European money and policies of indifference. And to look to the places from which people are fleeing—circumstances beyond their human endurance. @VaticanNews

Send who back?

TRIGGER ⚠️: content contain graphics \ I Am Power I am Power. I will cement your heart against humane feeling. I will seduce you with illusions: money, land, mansions, women, authority. I will blind your eyes and your soul until you no longer recognise your own cruelty. I will whisper to you of enemies. I will teach you suspicion. I will make you conspire with distant forces. They will arm you. You shall bring terror to the land, to your people, to your community, to your country. You shall do it in the name of security, in the name of existence, in the name of democracy. For power to sustain itself, I will command you to loot, to vandalise, to steal, to tear apart, to kill, to rape, to torture. I will conscript your young and forbid them from dreaming. I am Power. Your land, your Sudan, must serve me. I dwell far away: in deserts and palaces, in the Arabian Gulf, in the lingering shadows of Greeks, Romans, English, Germans, French, Belgians, and all those who claim a stake in the earth beyond the seas. For they envy what you possess. They envy your land. They envy your people. They envy your future. I am Power. I will condition you to seek recognition. I will summon you to become the instrument of my desires. Dear Sudan. Power is not the ability to inflict cruelty upon another. Power is not terror. Power is not domination. Dear Sudan, dear Sudanese, the land has bled for generations. Lay down your weapons. Lay down your terror. Lay down your lust. Lay down your anger. Lift your morals. Humanise them. So that this land may finally shelter us with a power that does not demand payment in flesh, in grief, or in blood. | >Dear viewers, this poem is less about governments and more about the psychology of domination, how people become willing servants of violence while believing they are serving something noble.> #freesudan

At the inauguration of the Basílica de la Sagrada Família Wednesday evening, I had the opportunity to thank @sanchezcastejon and share a few words with him. He encouraged me to continue my journey towards justice and told me that he is with us and that together we will win. In all of Europe, few political leaders have consistently stood against racism, fascism, war, and the erosion of international law and human rights without bending to the powerful. Pedro Sánchez is one of them. He faced brutal attacks from across Europe when he decided to regularise more than half a million migrants and refugees in Spain, yet he stood his ground. This is only one of the many principled positions he has taken in defence of human dignity and fundamental rights. For that, he has my respect and gratitude.