Volodin urged the UN to consider the issue of compensation to Africa from Western countries.
Photo: Ivan MAKEEV
Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin called on the UN to consider compensation to Africa from Western countries, mainly the United States, Britain and France, for the damage caused to the continent. The speaker of parliament wrote about this on the morning of August 3 on his telegram channel.
“During the period of colonialism, the United States, Great Britain and France, engaged in the slave trade, transported around 15 million people to America alone, who became slaves. These deportations bled Africa dry,” recalled Volodin, emphasizing that investigators call this “perhaps the greatest crime in British history” (the main recipients of the “black goods” were the British colonies in the New World, including future states). from the south). from the United States, where Africans were used as free labor on the plantations).
Despite the fact that the slave trade was banned in the 19th century and most of the colonies achieved independence in the 20th century, the West continues to exploit them even now. For example, “any initiative to protect the interests of Africans and the environment is emasculated under foreign pressure,” writes Volodin.
(One of the striking facts is the situation in Niger, where an anti-colonial coup took place last week. This country is a supplier of uranium to France, but the mining is done in the open pit, the desert wind carries radioactive dust in a vast territory, many residents of Niger do not have electricity, although its fuel lights one in three light bulbs in the Fifth Republic – ed.)
“Africa has the right not only to independently dispose of its wealth, but also to compensate for the damage caused by the colonialists,” Volodin summed up.
The volume of the telegram publication is limited: it did not include numerous other examples of oppression of the southern continent by Western countries. For example, Italy for 50 years tried to seize the main Orthodox power of the continent – Ethiopia. However, thanks also to Russian military advisers, the army of the African emperor defeated the invaders at the Battle of Adua in the spring of 1896.
The attempts continued with the coming to power in Rome of the Nazis. In 1935 Italy invaded Ethiopia again; the UN counterpart at the time, the League of Nations, was unable to do anything. The fascist army used chemical weapons (poison gases) against almost defenseless Africans; more than 700,000 Ethiopians died as a result of the hostilities, as well as the repressions in the occupied territories.
