THEY BEAT HIM DAILY, NO ONE HAS MOVED, HIS LIFE COST $10,000 IN CASH: Tesfay Hagos Alemayehu

Tesfay being tortured in what is believed to be Kufra on 21.03.2025.

There are men whose names will never touch headlines not because they are unworthy, but because the world has chosen a hierarchy of whose pain is worth hearing, whose screams can be dismissed, whose body may be bartered. Tesfay Hagos Alemayehu is such a man. He was born on the 15th of March, 1994, in Hagere Selam, a town in the northern highlands of Ethiopia, Tesfay grew up as one of many→a son of soil, of war, of withered promises. But today, he is something else: a man stripped of dignity and caged in Kufra, Libya, where his Black skin is a currency in the economy of human trafficking. 

He was not searching for riches. He was not chasing dreams built on illusions. He fled Ethiopia because the land from which he emerged was bleeding→Tigray, a region devoured by war and starvation.

And so he ran. As many do. As many must. But in this world, the Black man’s journey toward dignity is a crime punished before it is understood.

We are often told that men must endure. That we must not weep. That we must clench our teeth through the breaking of our bones. And so, when Tesfay’s captors lash his body with black pipes, when they fasten his limbs into impossible knots and pin his skull to the cement floor with their boots, some may whisper→“he should have known better than to go to Libya.” This world, so fragile to the Black body, so hostile to Black men who dare to gamble their survival, still manages to judge them when they fall into the trap.

Tesfay’s back show scars of torture filmed by his captors on 21.03.2025, South Libya - Kufra

For nearly a month now, Tesfay has been held in Kufra, tortured daily. Beaten until blood replaces sweat, denied food, deprived of water. And for what? A $10,000 ransom demanded by his captors, criminal Libyans, backed by transnational rings of Ethiopian and Eritrean traffickers. In the videos, men who speak in Arabic, flog with metal rods, and press his head into the dirt while the camera rolls. The videos sent to his family are not threats; they are proof of cruelty so normalized it now functions as a business model. In these images, Tesfay appears bound, shirtless, bruised, shaved bald and bleeding. 

And where is the state? Ethiopia? Libya? The international community?

Twice, not once, but twice Tesfay’s family knocked on the doors of the local police in Ethiopia, bearing the unbearable news that their son had been kidnapped, held for ransom in Libya, and tortured daily. Twice, the police turned them away. Twice they were told, in unambiguous tones, “There is nothing we can do. Every day people are trafficked to Libya.”

This is not ignorance, it is the institutional shrug of Black suffering. The state tasked with protecting its citizens has chosen not even to file a report. Not even to issue a slip of paper that might have enabled us→Refugees in Libya→to trigger Interpol protocols.

When a government refuses to document its citizens’ disappearance, it is not just abandoning them→it is erasing them, but how can it erase us from its conscience?. Tesfay is bleeding, and the Ethiopian police cannot even find ink to write his name.

And Kufra? We have flagged this case to the local police there. We have sent communications, reached out to partners, and sounded the alarm. But no action has been taken. None.

Ready filmed by the first captors who demanded 8,000$ before shortly selling him to another unit. This picture was sent to his family on 05.03.2025.

Instead, the traffickers flourish. We know their phone numbers. We know their methods. We know that Tesfay was initially captured by one group and later sold to another→like livestock. We know that at least 450 others are detained with him. Black men. Black women. Children. All waiting. All hoping their families will somehow conjure thousands of dollars, or else face death off-camera.

And still, the Libyan authorities do nothing. Not even a raid.

We at Refugees in Libya have submitted a full report. We have verified Tesfay’s identity using family photos, government documents, and live video calls with his brother. We have compiled the evidence→photos, video, audio, metadata. We have offered it to agencies who claim to fight human trafficking. We have sent alerts to Tripoli, to the so-called “task forces” created to investigate cross-border human trafficking. They’ve acknowledged receipt. But Tesfay is still bleeding.

They say things take time. But when your ribs are breaking and your head is smashed into concrete, time is not a neutral passage, it is a sentence.

The humanitarian industry, one must say, has mastered the art of reports. The language is pristine: “protection protocols,” “urgent referral pathways,” “coordination mechanisms.” Meanwhile, men like Tesfay rot.

Even when evidence is abundant, when video shows torture in real time, when you know the captors’ phone numbers, when you have the full names of the victims, the global system refuses to act. Why? Because the victims are African. Because the victims are Black. Because the victims are disposable.

Tesfay’s torturers, do it on a live camera, they torture him with his hands tied to his back and he can be seen bleeding.

If the world wanted proof of its own rotting conscience, it need look no further than the recent release of Almasri→a notorious human trafficker→by Italian authorities. This man, responsible for untold human suffering across Libya’s smuggling corridors, walked free just two months ago. And now, his network is emboldened. His men, operating under the banner of Libya’s so-called “Internal Security Agency,” within weeks of his release, launched an offensive against the few organizations providing aid to migrants and so they have shut down 10 international NGOs. These NGOs, far from being subversive actors, did nothing more than distribute blankets, water, bread, medication and dignity to the displaced. In Almasri’s Libya, even that is criminal.

This is not just about Tesfay, not about Naima Jamal. This is about a global order that accepts the mass degradation of Black life. It is a system where African men are kidnapped, tortured, and traded in broad daylight→and no one is held accountable.

Tesfay is now a symbol of what happens when the world decides a man’s pain is inconvenient. When families cry out and governments turn away. When international agencies measure urgency by how close to Europe the crisis happens.

One must be clear: if Tesfay dies, his blood will not be his own burden to bear. It will belong to the officers in Ethiopia who refused to file a report. It will belong to the Libyan police in Kufra who refused to intervene. It will belong to the agencies that ignored our submission. It will belong to me→you→us who is reading this without taking any action. A sorry is no price you and us must pay, not a pity but action is the price and do something in your capacity now. 

We, at Refugees in Libya, will not forget his name. Tesfay Hagos Alemayehu.