European Union Facilitates Slave Trade in North Africa

Knowing Europe’s horrendous colonial history and today’s European Union’s (EU) ever-growing tyranny, there is little surprise in the EU’s facilitating slave trade in Northern Africa, mostly through Europe-NATO’s destruction of today’s chaotic Libya. The latter with the support of the then Obama Government. 

Imagine this: A coalition of humanitarian organizations has alleged that sub-Saharan African migrants in Tunisia are being apprehended and sold to Libyan traffickers, and that the process is facilitated by agreements with the European Union and Italy, according to a report released on Tuesday (28 January 2025). It claims they are detained by authorities, held in detention centers, and subsequently sold off for as little as $12 each. See this from RT for full article.

The report states, “State Trafficking: Expulsion and Sale of Migrants from Tunisia to Libya,” is based on the account of dozens of people from countries such as Cameroon, Chad, Sudan, Guinea, and Ivory Coast, who claim having been enslaved and shipped from Tunisia to Libya.

One migrant said, “They sold us to the Libyans. I really mean buying and selling, like for objects, they sold us like slaves.”

The report of the humanitarian organizations alleges the EU and Italy facilitate the Tunisian slave trade to prevent refugee boats from crossing the Med Sea to Europe. Italy apparently invested close to US$ 100 million in “training” Tunisian border guards, which resulted in 60% reduction of crossings from North Africa.

The study highlights the human rights violations, also indicating that women and children are sold at prices of up to US$ 90, for their potential as sex slaves. Likewise, sexual violence, torture and forced labor are pointed out.

This EU-enabling of “modern” 21^st century slavery, trading humans from US$ 12 to US$ 90, is reminiscent of the European colonization and homicidal oppression for close to thousand years in Africa, South America and Asia – and ongoing as of this day, unspoken, unreported by the media.

Today, colonization happens largely veiled through financial exploitation and civil war-like conditions with child labor, mostly in Congo and Central Africa to mine western coveted high-priced minerals and rare earths, used in the production of chips and other electronic devices for cell phones, luxury gadgets and foremost, the weapon industry.

Slavehood, civil wars in Africa – killing to produce killing machines for profit, that was and apparently still is Europe today.

Just look at the French financial exploitation of her “former” West- and Central African colonies through the CFA franc (Communauté Financière Africaine – or African Financial Community). As in colonial times, the CFA franc is still guaranteed by the French Central Bank to the tune of 70% to 80%, making and keeping these 14 countries dependent on almost exclusive trade with France. West African French colonies are Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, and Niger; Central Africa: Central African Republic, Chad, Gabon, Cameroon, Republic of the Congo, and Equatorial Guinea.

It is estimated that if these 14 countries would be liberated from the CFA franc’s stranglehold, France might lose up to 20% to 30% of her GDP.

For the last five years or so, these countries are working on liberating themselves from French economic slavehood. It is not easy. These countries are largely rich in natural resources, gold, silver, uranium, hydrocarbons, and a plethora of highly sought minerals and rare earths.

When recent coup d’état in Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Gabon indicated a shift away from France, they were immediately courted by Washington, for replacing the Euro-dependency for a dollar dependency. The notorious Madame Victoria Nuland conspicuously visited in August 2023 Niger and Burkina Faso as she was “concerned” about recent military coups.

You may remember her for orchestrating the Maidan Coup in Kiev in February 2014, from which the current ongoing proxy war US-NATO-Ukraine against Russia emerged, leaving so far millions of deaths. In a phone conversation with then US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, she was recorded infamously saying f**k Europe, meaning if they don’t want to go along, we do it ourselves.

The enormous riches of Africa, plus corruption in their leadership, matched by western corruption, make real independence for the benefit of the people an enormous challenge.

When Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso, President from 1983-1987, attempted to free the former French colonies from the claws of the CFA franc, he was assassinated in 1987, a murder initiated by the French Government.

Later, when Muammar Gaddafi attempted to free Africa from western dependence and exploitation with a unified African market, including an African monetary system based on the Libyan Gold Dinar, he was brutally lynched in 2011 by French NATO troops – compliments of then French President Sarkozy with the help of Obama’s Foreign Secretary, Hillary Clinton. Remember her atrocious grinning, “We came, we saw, he died.”

Who could ever forget so much inhumanity? These are not humans, maybe not even monsters.

Until this day, Europe has not learned any lesson. Ironically, their cold-bloodedness is reflected in the EU’s utter subservience to Washington, converted more than ever into the self-styled empire, now, with President Trump at the rudder.

Europe’s lesson will and MUST come.

Slave trade with African immigrants, most of whose livelihoods have been destroyed because of hundreds of years of European colonialism and who are seeking now refuge in the lands of their very butchers, the closest they see as promising hope, these butchers must be judged by merciless Rules of Law, if not, certainly by the Laws of Nature. They never fail.

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By: Peter Koenig

Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.