Over 300 schoolgirls were kidnapped in Zamfara, in the second mass kidnapping of its kind in just over a week in Nigeria. Last week, 42 children were abducted in west-central Nigeria and more than 300 boys were abducted in early December in Kankara. In April 2014, the Islamic terrorists of Boko Haram kidnapped 276 students from the city of Chibok. It was they who inaugurated the season of mass abductions. They are kidnapped by gangs of criminals with ties to jihadist groups in the north-east of the country. Young women are often forced to marry the kidnappers when they fail to make money on ransom demands. They are often sold for 2,000 naire, the Nigerian currency (equivalent to 12 dollars). The NGO Free the Slaves estimates a profit of $ 1.6 billion (an amount greater than the GDP of eight African countries) from African slavery each year. According to the bishops, "Nigeria is on the verge of collapse" and is in danger of breaking apart. Unfortunately, the West feeds on Third Worldism and says "Black Lives Matter" but does not care about this slavery, on the contrary it often collaborates with it. In 2017, shocking images of slave auctions in Libya surfaced: men who spoke Arabic sold twelve Nigerians. It is estimated that 250,000 people lived in slavery in Mali in 2013. A Malian slave, Raichatou, told the Guardian that she was enslaved at age 7 when her mother, also a slave, died. "My father could not help but watch when my mother's boss came to claim me and my brothers," said the woman. It is estimated that 20 percent of the population in Mauritania is held in slavery. Many are of the Haratin ethnic group, black Moors, while half of the population is made up of Arabs and Berbers. A BBC investigation found that domestic workers in Saudi Arabia are being sold online in a booming slave market. Algerian essayist Mohammed Sifaoui reminds us that "Mauritania in North Africa is today the most enslaved country in the world. Qatar is too, as is Saudi Arabia, under the banner of the Guardians of the Holy Places of Islam". Today, slavery still exists in many parts of Africa and the Middle East, but Western public self-flagellation on Victorian statues or statues of Columbus and Washington glosses over the actual slavery going on, alive, well, and ignored. The West not only turns its back on the new slave markets, but the United Nations Human Rights Council welcomes states like Sudan, where tens of thousands of Christian women and children have been enslaved during jihadist raids; Kenya and Nigeria, where the police rescued hundreds of children chained in an Islamic school; Pakistan, where Christian women are often condemned to servitude. Many of these slaves then end up on the illegal immigration markets, which Cardinal Robert Sarah called "a modern form of slavery". The West actively collaborates in this horror. Giulio Meotti is, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author, in English, of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter and of "J'Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel" published by Mantua Books, in addition to books in Italian. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Gatestone, Frontpage and Commentary .
