SLAVE TRADE, CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

Sub-Saharan Africa was wrecked by French colonialist policies that the French Right wants to redeem. The Right thus succeeded in including the positive role of colonization in the law of 23rd February. To the revanchist speech of those who have never forgiven dominated peoples’ fight for their right to recognition and existence, Algeria in particular, Aimé Césaire’s comments in Discourse on Colonialism written in post-World War II that colonialism and Nazism are identical is the likeliest answer. Europeans tolerated "Nazism before it was inflicted on them...because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples ; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack." This implicit comparison was included in the final statement of the World Conference against Racism, which held in Durban, South Africa, from the 31st August to the 7th September 2001, through which the international community recorded and acknowledged the slave trade as a crime against humanity. Figures for the depopulation caused to Africa between the 16th and 19th century will always remain unknown. Usual estimates covering the whole trade period are between 17 to 18 millions of deported slaves with 13.5 millions due to Europeans (with a peak of 6.1 millions in the 18th century) and 4.1 millions due to Arabs. The estimates do not account for the deaths caused by razzias and trip exhaustion between the native area and the port of embarkation, and therefore held for a minimum. In entire regions (included Central Africa), rural economies crumbled because of systematic deportations.