Cecile Allegra (II): “Rape them all”

“When you rape the men, you eliminate the political class''. What is happening in Libya is probably one of the worst Crimes against Humanity since WW2. Her earlier films, hardly known in the English-speaking world, oppose the hypocrisy of Fortress Europe, desperate to stop immigration and hide the true situation. Her two previous films dealt with the growing 'industry' of trafficking that moved from the Sinai desert ("Under the skin'; 2014) to Libya, where it began before Ghaddafi's fall in 2013. 12,000 people have died in the Sinai camps alone.

Cecile changed the title of her film about Libya -"Libya unspeakable crime"- because she found it 'lenient'. "Rape them all”, is the order given by torturers when they commit the crime, it's barbaric, it's violent, it is exactly what this never-investigated crime is: a black hole”.

In "Rape them all'; witnesses tell of prisoners queueing for food being forced to penetrate themselves one after another, on a piece of wood, fixed to a wall. They are told: "we want to see blood, or you won't eat". Injuries require surgery, diseases are transmitted. Most victims are young Africans, with no intention of coming to Europe who were kidnapped by traffickers as valuable 'goods' to sell. 

Activists based in Tunis collect witness accounts from survivors of torture, and make a risky journey into Libya, accompanied by Celine Bardet an international lawyer, who worked on mass rape in Bosnia.

Cecile talks to The Prisma about the issues raised in these films on migrant-trafficking the relentlessly maintained curtain of silence, and the failures of journalism. 

This interview was published in The Prisma Multicultural Newspaper on 17th July 2021, and can be read in full with photos here:

https://theprisma.co.uk/2021/07/17/cecile-allegra-ii-rape-them-all/