I have been reading a little bit more about the EU migrant crisis and chanced upon this article. When I started reading the article, I had no idea that EU countries were paying Col. Muammar Gadaffi to keep Africans from boarding boats bound for the EU. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy actually signed an agreement with Gadaffi in 2009 pledging $5 Billion over 25 years, that is about $ 200 million per year as 'Compensation for its 30 year occupation of the country which ended in 1943'.
Interestingly, $500 million of that 5 Billion was for Electronic Surveillance equipment to be installed on the Libyan coastline according to this article. After Gadaffi was killed in 2011, the one check was removed and the floodgates opened.
According to human rights activist Ajamu Baraka, the EU migrant crisis is a direct consequence of the colonial practices of western European nations, namely Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom. For decades, western European countries exploited the natural resources of Africa and enslaved their people to work in the mines so to speak. Colonial Raj ended when the cost of extracting those resources and transferring them back to Europe proved to be more expensive than it was worth; in effect leaving the native people alienated them from their erstwhile natural lifestyle - whether it was agriculture or hunting. It is these people, displaced and without means to earn a living, who are now in desperation boarding vessels for the land where all their wealth moved to.
Has the EU, by this reckoning, come face to face with its own Karma?
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