Black Africans slaughtered in Libya by Rebels

Library - Africa

Wednesday, 23 March 2011 12:25

Written by Onwuchekwa Jemie

From all available reports, black Africans are being slaughtered in the thousands in the ongoing civil war in Libya. First, the rebels branded these unarmed and harmless migrant workers as “Gaddafi’s mercenaries” and mass-murdered them; then Gaddafi’s loyalists identified them with the rebels and massacred them as they attempted to flee across the borders.

Foreigners from the well organized societies of Europe, America and China were escorted out and airlifted to safety by their home countries. But the African nationals from Nigeria, Niger, Chad, etc. were left to be slaughtered by Arab Libyans from both sides of the conflict.

A similar outrage was visited on Nigerians in Libya ten years ago.

Those who have long insisted that the Arabs are our friends because we share a religion with them, or because we share a continent with them, should by now be reconsidering the matter. First of all, Arabs are recent intruders on the African continent. Starting from a few years after the death of Mohammed (632 A.D.), Arabs invaded the African territories north of the Sahara, subdued the people, murdered as many as they could, absorbed the rest into their society as serfs and slaves, and settled on the land which they now call their own. They have never had anything but the deepest contempt and hostility for black Africans, the owners of the land they now occupy.

Those in doubt of these facts of history should observe Mauritania, where the occupying Arabs hold the Africans in total suppression and slavery, and Sudan where a war has raged for decades between the Africans in the south and the settler Arabs in the north who have sought to annihilate the black population so as to occupy the entire country. Darfur, the scene of horrendous genocide in the past decade, is only a recent and tiny sample of the Arab atrocities  going on in Sudan for years. The recent plebiscite whereby the south voted overwhelmingly for separation and independent nationhood, is the first glimmer of hope for the African population in Sudan.

For 15 centuries the Arabs have been relentless in their oppression and enslavement of Africans despite the fact that they share the same religion. The trans-Saharan Arab trade in African slaves is a thousand years longer and possibly more voluminous than the infamous trans-Atlantic European trade in African slaves. Religion has never stood in the way of conquerors, slave traders, and mass murderers. Indeed, much of the conquest and genocide in the history of the world was carried out under the banner of some religion, was protected and promoted with all sorts of mythological and philosophical justifications (all fake, of course), and was passed on to us, in the present day, not just as a fait accompli but as correct, ethical, and just—to the extent that our intellectuals (professors) and our men and women of public affairs (economists, entrepreneurs, political leaders and assorted self-servers) are, for the most part, not even aware that there is anything to examine or question in the global status quo.

Islam from the beginning was spread by the sword, first in the Arabian peninsula, and then beyond. The history books are an endless roll call of battles—the Battle of This and the Battle of That—by which the New Believers subdued the Infidels and converted them to their faith. But conversion brought no end to the violence. 15 centuries later, different sects of the same religion (e.g. Shia and Sunni) continue to slaughter each other. At virtually every Feast or Pilgrimage the death toll from bombs exploded by the opposing sect is simply amazing.

Christianity exhibits a similarly bloody history. Since the German monk Martin Luther pinned his “95 Theses” on the door of Wittenberg village church in 1517, thus initiating the vertical split in Christianity, Catholics and Protestants have tortured and slaughtered each other in the millions. It was only in 1998 that Catholics and Protestants of Northern Ireland signed a truce, finally closing the bloody chapters of intra-religious European conflict.

If the adherents of these world-conquering religions can be so vicious and cruel to one another (same religion, same nation, same race, same color), why are we surprised that they have, over the centuries, treated black Africans just as badly?

The real issue in the current Libyan slaughter of Africans is, first, our unpreparedness to protect our nationals in foreign countries and to evacuate them rapidly when there is crisis. But even more important is the very fact that we have such masses of (largely undocumented) “migrant workers” all over the globe—from unskilled laborers to the finest of fine professionals. The European, American or Chinese workers in Libya and other foreign countries are purposeful “frontier forces” on a mission of political or economic enterprise beneficial to their nation. Except for diplomats, Nigerians outside the well beaten paths of foreign travel are usually on their own, pursuing disconnected personal goals, their presence unknown or unacknowledged by their home government. And when trouble strikes, they are equally on their own.

Nations which cannot organize work to engage their able-bodied and intelligent working population at home are condemned to export them (a modern version of the slave trade), feeding  the factories, research laboratories, hospitals and classrooms of other nations with their best. The natives invariably resent the presence and success of such foreign workers; and when they get the chance they vent their anger on the foreigners.