The information has been circulating for a few days in the press. Saudi Arabian border guards reportedly massacred hundreds of migrants from Ethiopia who wanted to enter the kingdom via Yemen. This information was given by the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch, which published a report on the case. The United States was alarmed by this report and asked Saudi Arabia to conduct an investigation. The UN for its part declared that this report was "very worrying", while refraining from confirming the information. But the same UN reported last year that Saudi armed forces shot dead 430 migrants in southern Saudi Arabia and northern Yemen during the first four months of 2002.
Until the time of writing this column, that is to say two days after the disclosure of this information, I have not heard from any official of an African country, apart from Ethiopia, from the Union of any African civil society organization to speak out against this massacre and demand an explanation from Saudi Arabia. One information chasing the other, we will all soon have forgotten this massacre. As we forgot the one from last year. How we have forgotten the fate of these African migrants whom the authorities of Algeria, this “brother country”, had driven out of their country by depositing them in the middle of the desert, without water, without food. Just as we are forgetting what our Tunisian "brothers" are doing to migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, that is to say first of all by organizing pogroms against them in the cities where they live, and then laying them also in the desert to die there. There are many of these Arab "brothers" who despise us to the point of treating us worse than animals, humiliating our sisters and brothers who work in their countries, killing us without the slightest remorse, just as we have none when we kill flies or mosquitoes. And yet, we will roll out the red carpet for them as soon as they do us the honor of coming to our house. And every year, thousands of us ruin ourselves to worship their God. Are we so terrified by certain Arab countries? Are we so indebted to them? Why is all the humiliation and mistreatment they put us through aroused so much indifference on our part? Our only concern here is France. I dare not imagine what would have happened in our countries if we had been told that French police had shot a single African migrant. When at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Africans living in this country were victims of discrimination, there, yes, we protested. The racism of white people towards us moves us. When the whites themselves are moved by it. But that of some of our Arab “brothers” slips on our skin.
What kind of men are we after all? What kind of people are we? None of the misfortunes that strike us move us. And yet, how many tears do we not shed over the misfortunes of others? Who has forgotten the hot tears shed by some of our Heads of State after the Islamist attacks in Paris? Who has forgotten the Malian Head of State going to bow down in Paris over the bodies of French soldiers who fell in Mali, something he had never done for the thousands of his own citizens who died every day in the same terms ?
I believe our problem is that we are a dead people. If we have become insensitive to the stabs inflicted on us, to the bullets that penetrate our bodies, it is because we, the African people, are a dead people. So, we can be insulted, trampled on, tortured, sold as slaves in the middle of the 21st century on African land, massacred, we are no longer able to react. Not even to moan or be indignant. So why do we expect respect from other people towards us? We sell off our most valuable resources ourselves. What has a dead people to do with gold, uranium, diamonds, oil? So let's be quiet. Let us keep the silence of the dead forever and let live those who want to live. Even if it is on our corpses.
By Venance Konan
*This article has been translated from French into English by Marcus Boni Teiga
