The shame of Mauritania

The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, speaks during a press conference following a summit on the post-Qaddafi Middle East held at the Elysée Palace in Paris — September 1, 2011. (Lionel Bonaventure / Agence France-Presse)

Originally published by Weekly Blitz

November 23, 2019

Peter Baum

Mauritania, a member state of the United Nations, is a country where slavery of indigenous black Africans is part of an ingrained, historical culture and continues unabated and unchallenged globally.  White Arabian Islamists or Berbers are the masters and let me repeat for the readers, indigenous, black Africans, locally known as Haratines are the victims.

One would have believed especially after the condemnation, sanctions and isolation of the South African Apartheid regime some decades past, that the world community of nations, driven by global outrage of their citizens, and a horrified and concerned media, would focus on this issue and condemn  Mauritania to an equal level of criticism and sanctions as South Africa endured.  The silence is and has been deafening.

Global media is not bothered. Anti-racists have shown no concern. Members of Parliaments including black, mixed-race, left-wing, morally decent politicians who always tell us that they have fought racism all their lives and the general public in western democracies are not in the slightest bit concerned about slavery and apartheid inflicted on black Africans in Mauritania. Paradoxically, the one politician the collective above accuse daily of racism, Donald Trump, is concerned and has acted accordingly by cutting trade ties with racist, slave loving, apartheid Mauritania.

It is an irony that no attention is devoted to assisting the victims of this outrageous behavior by a member country of the United Nations. Indeed, such is the inertia that I would suggest the overwhelming majority of people reading this post would not even know the geographical location of Mauritania let alone its capital city or the name of the current President. If those undertaking the slavery and apartheid said, white Christians or Jewish Zionists, do you think the United Nations and those collective groups noted above, would have taken notice? Do you think that certain political groups on the left-wing extremes or black writers, musical and movie stars, and anti-racist campaigners would be silent? Would the BBC have a band of reporters on hand continuously exposing the regime?

The logic is quite simple. Those who would normally be shouting foul are not in the least bit concerned about the victims and will want to expose the perpetrators but only if the perpetrators identify with certain groups detested by the pseudo-intellectual mob. Zionists, Jews, and white Christians fall within these categories.

As can be analyzed from the trade with the European Union, Mauritanian exports to this block were up 5.8% in the year 2017/18 and net/net trade was up 1.4 percent. Clearly the European Union has no problem trading with a country involved for decades and on a daily basis in slavery and apartheid. What is even more bizarre is that the western media seems to have no appetite, be it for professional incompetence or a carefree attitude to indigenous black African suffering to leave unreported these barbarities.

A measure of the nauseating hypocrisy regarding trading ideology is to expose Norway which according to global economic statistics identifies this country along with China, South Korea, Spain, and Switzerland as being amongst the most important trading counterparties of the racist, apartheid slave-trading nation of Mauritania.

What irony; what a paradox; what hypocrisy; good old Norway that beacon of neutrality, (read cowardice) having ruined the Northern hemisphere environment through a combination of historical overfishing and oil exploration is now one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Such is her wealth she has created a sovereign wealth fund that allows this sickening democracy to be one of the biggest trade partners with a country that engages in slavery but boycotts the only Jewish State in the world for building in its very own capital city.

Slavery and Apartheid inflicted by white Arabs on indigenous black Africans. The world is silent except for Donald Trump’s Administration.

Peter Baum is a contributor to Blitz. He also is a columnist and research scholar.