Dr. Bahaa Helmy Writes: The Return of the Slave Trade

Every year the United Nations and UNESCO observe an international day for the remembrance of the black slave trade and its abolition, with the aim of recording the tragedy of the slave trade, whatever its form or colour, in the memory of the peoples of the nations, and they invite the countries of the world to organize annual events to consider the historical causes of this tragedy, its methods, its consequences and the importance of confronting it. However, slavery changes and reappears in contemporary forms, including the enslavement of the debtor and the needy, the sale, exploitation and recruitment of children, the trafficking of women and girls for sexual purposes, and other forms of human trafficking and organized crime, and its roots lie in ignorance, fanaticism and greed. The world is witnessing a flourishing of slave-trading activity at the hands of some states and the terrorist organizations loyal to them. This phenomenon has become one of the features of the current century, after America harnessed some terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria while applying the term fighters to them, and Turkey opened its arms and its heart to ISIS and their women and children, to use them in hostile acts and old colonial ambitions, while trying to promote them as mercenaries. This is the term the US State Department adopted in its recent statements, whereas they are in reality criminals being harnessed in the interest of Turkey and its supporters. The world has seen the trade in slaves and the trafficking of women and girls for sexual purposes in public markets in ISIS areas in Iraq and Syria, whether for the enjoyment and entertainment of the organization’s members, and to give them positive energy to improve their fighting in the field, as they used to say, in addition to bearing children to create new generations and cadres who rise and grow up under the ideology of this organization. There are many video clips of the buying and selling and the pricing of each woman or girl on social networking sites during the rule of ISIS. These are catastrophic scenes, not only at the moral or religious level but at the level of all humanity, and a mark of shame on the foreheads of the states that support and finance those organizations and groups. There are those who have used moral influence on women and girls with slogans such as sexual jihad and the like, as the Brotherhood and its women leaders did, most regrettably. There is the recruitment of children to be used in wars, or to be put to work, or to be exploited in begging or in the organ trade, exploiting their living conditions or when they flee conflict zones in search of lost safety. Turkey’s exploitation of takfiris and criminals and their families who are fugitives from justice, sheltering them and training them in army camps in order to push them into Libya under the name of mercenaries, is nothing but slave trading, even though they are classified as criminals. The Ottoman Erdoğan has previously blackmailed Europe and threatened to deport the European ISIS members to their countries, and he moved crowds of refugees to the borders of Greece and Europe. If slavery was rooted in the culture of some parts of the world in the past, and international organizations celebrate its abolition, at the same time Turkey (a member of the European Union) has brought back the phenomenon of the slave trade and has even entrenched it at the international level as well, amid UN and European silence and failure to act in the face of those crimes. The question that arises is how the European Union allows one of its member states to engage in the slave trade, exploit migrants and displaced persons, and finance terrorists in violation of UN charters and international agreements, foremost among them the Charter of the United Nations. Where is the United Nations? Is it permissible to celebrate an international day for the abolition of the slave trade at a time when Turkey is embracing the slave trade and the exploitation of human beings? The failure of the European Union and the United Nations to defend UN values and to create a humane climate, in accordance with what international charters and human rights establish, free from this harm and this brutality represented by the slave trade, makes them a partner in the return of the slave trade.