“Here in the desert, Algeria has abandoned more than 13,000 people in the past 14 months, including pregnant women and children, stranding them without food or water and forcing them to walk, sometimes at gunpoint, under temperatures of up to 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit).”
In this May 8, 2018 photo provided by Liberian migrant Ju Dennis, Algerian gendarmes carrying AK-47 assault rifles load migrants onto trucks to drop them off at the Niger border. Algeria has abandoned more than 13,000 people in the desert in the past 14 months, including pregnant women and children, stranding them without food or water and forcing them to walk, sometimes at gunpoint, under temperatures of up to 48 C (118 F). Dennis filmed his deportation with a cell phone he kept hidden on his body.
AP Photo / Ju Dennis
With that chilling declaration, the AP opened a new chapter in the ongoing, global saga of migrant suffering. Paris-based Global Enterprise reporter Lori Hinnant, Johannesburg Chief Photographer Jerome Delay and Istanbul-based Global Enterprise video-first journalist Bram Janssen revealed the Algerian government’s complicity in a horror that had gone unreported – and had led to the deaths of an unknown number of migrants. Their exclusive story is the Beat of the Week.
As part of a project on the world’s missing, Hinnant was trying to figure out how many migrants had disappeared – and presumably had died – in the Sahara desert. Hinnant was surprised to find that some had died not on their way to Europe, but on their way back: Pressured by European nations to cut off the flow of migrants in their direction, Algeria was deporting them and abandoning them in the desert.
Hinnant pressed the issue with many humanitarian organizations; all of them knew about the desert expulsions but were initially reluctant to talk because they hoped to resolve the issue quietly with the Algerian government. She eventually determined that Algeria had sent more than 13,000 people into the desert.
In a May 9, 2018 photo provided by Liberian Ju Dennis, fellow migrants being expelled from Algeria lie in a truck headed towards the Niger border at Point Zero, from which they must walk south into the Sahara towards the Nigerian border post of Assamaka, 10 miles south. In the open truck, migrants struggled to shade their bodies from the sun and hide from the soldiers outside.
AP Photo / Ju Dennis
She then made contact with migrants who had actually been expelled – including some who had already returned to Algeria despite what they had endured. They started sharing not just their stories, but also photos and videos and, finally, real time information about the roundups and expulsions, which by early spring were happening almost daily.
The next challenge was reporting the story in Algeria. First, the team sought visas from Algeria; it has yet to approve them. They got visas from Niger, instead, and headed there. They then sought and received the local permissions needed to travel in the Agadez region, which is considered by the State Department and European governments to be among the most dangerous places in the world for Westerners.
Just reaching the border area required hours of off-road travel in a military convoy. Conditions made the reporting difficult – Delay and Janssen couldn’t work during the peak of the day because parts of their cameras would start to melt. But the team persevered, obtaining more UGC from a migrant there, and capturing the story in stunning words and images.
Three men head north towards Algeria after crossing the Assamaka border post in northern Niger, June 3, 2018. Even as Algeria was expelling migrants, abandoning many in the Sahara, others continued to stream north, seeking work in Algeria or Libya or hoping to make it to Europe. People die going both ways; the Sahara is a swift killer that leaves little evidence behind.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
A tire used as a road marker hangs from a tree in Niger's Tenere desert region of the south central Sahara, June 3, 2018. On the map, the Trans-Sahara highway links Algeria’s Mediterranean coast to the distant Atlantic shore in Nigeria, but the highway frequently deteriorates from black tar into sand tracks.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
At an international migrant transit camp in Arlit, Niger, June 1, 2018, Liberian Ju Dennis displays the cell phone he used to film his survival in the Sahara after being expelled from Algeria. Dennis kept the phone hidden on his body as he and other migrants were abandoned in the desert. “You’re facing deportation in Algeria – there is no mercy,” he said. “I want to expose them now. ... We saw what they did. And we got proof.”
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
Migrants climb into a truck to head north into Algeria at the Assamaka border post in northern Niger, June 3, 2018. The International Organization for Migration has estimated that for every migrant known to have died crossing the Mediterranean, as many as two are lost in the desert — potentially upwards of 30,000 people since 2014.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
Nigeriens and third-country migrants head towards Libya from Agadez, Niger, June 4, 2018.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
A smuggler counts his money as migrants climb into trucks to head north across the Sahara into Algeria from the Assamaka border post in northern Niger, June 3, 2018. Trucks were leaving all the time, taking their fare in Algerian dinars.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
Migrants and locals wait for trucks arriving from Algeria to unload their cargo at a giant desert trading post called "The Dune," in the no-man's land separating Niger and Algeria north of the Assamaka border post in northern Niger, June 3, 2018. The men hope to earn money to pay for the trip north to Algeria, Libya or even Europe.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
A dead goat lays in the sand outside the Assamaka border post in Niger's Tenere desert region of the south central Sahara, June 3, 2018. Traveling in temperatures reaching 48 C (118 F) in summer, the expansive monotony of the bare Tenere desert is broken by the carcasses of abandoned vehicles, lone trees able to survive on the barest whisper of water, rusted water barrels and sand-swept truck tires used as distance markers.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
A migrant who was expelled from Algeria sits by a water point in a transit center in Arlit, Niger, June 1, 2018. The man did not speak, but with scars on his hands and arms, some assume he endured severe abuse in Algeria, a place where many have been jailed, beaten and robbed by authorities before being abandoned at gunpoint in the Sahara.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
A migrant who was expelled from Algeria is restrained by others after he attempted to undress in the midst of a transit center in Arlit, Niger, June 2, 2018. The men had spent the previous evening bathing him. “We think he might be from Guinea; he seems to stay close to the people who speak French,” said Aliou Kande, an 18-year-old migrant from Senegal. No one is sure because the man doesn’t speak.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
Nigeriens and third-country migrants head towards Libya from Agadez, Niger, June 4, 2018. Migrants from across sub-Saharan African – Mali, the Gambia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Niger and more – are part of the mass migration toward Europe, some fleeing violence, others just hoping to make a living.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
The frame of an abandoned Peugeot 404 rests in Niger's Tenere desert region of the south central Sahara on Sunday, June 3, 2018. Once a well-worn roadway for overland tourists, the highway’s 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles) are now a favored path for migrants heading north in hopes of a better life – and more recently thousands who are being expelled south from Algeria.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
The story was picked up by French media, including the investigative site Mediapart, and received prominent play in both Al Jazeera and its video outlet AJ+ as well as Sky News, which repackaged the video for its own online version. Hinnant was interviewed on Canadian television, BBC World News, Public Radio International and NPR’s “All Things Considered”:
Most importantly, the expulsions to the desert ground to a halt as soon as AP presented its findings and requested comment from Algeria’s government, about a week before publishing – the longest break the International Organization for Migration has seen since May 2017. They have yet to resume.
For their persistence in following a trail that took them to one of the world’s most inhospitable places – and to an extraordinary tale of death and cruelty – Hinnant, Delay and Janssen share this week’s Beat of the Week award.