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<bmanby@gn.apc.org>
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997
In April 1994, Human Rights Watch/Africa published a report on
Mauritania titled "Campaign of Terror: State Sponsored
Repression of Black Africans". The central focus of the report
was the events of 1989/91, in which large numbers of black
Mauritanians were driven out of Mauritania into Senegal, and
several hundred extrajudicially executed by the government.
However, the issue of slavery was also considered, and the
conclusion of the report was that, despite the official
abolition of slavery in 1980:
The institution of slavery continues today in Mauritania,
especially in the countryside. Tens of thousands of blacks
are considered the property of their masters and are
subjected entirely to their masters' will. They work long
hours for no remuneration. They are denied access to
education and do not enjoy the freedom to marry or to
associate freely with other blacks. They escape servitude,
not by exercising their 'legal' rights, but mainly through
escape. Ignorance of their rights, fear of recapture and
the torture that often follows, and the lack of marketable
skills in an impoverished country discourage a substantial
number of slaves from trying to escape. Slavery is said to
be particularly widespread in the eastern part of the
country.
I visited Mauritania myself in April of this year (to attend
the 21st session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples'
Rights), and the issue of slavery, together with the amnesty
passed to cover the events of 1989/91, dominated discussion of
the human rights situation in Mauritania itself. It has only
recently been possible to form nongovernmental organisations in
Mauritania (since a democratisation process began in 1991), but
SOS Esclaves is an active campaigning body which challenges the
official line that slavery is no longer practised. The
government has also set up its own GONGOs (government-organised
NGOs), including the Comite national de lutte pour l'eradication
des sequelles de l'esclavage en mauritanie, which maintains that
there are only present consequences of past slavery, but that
slavery itself is history.
The 22nd session of the African Commission has just taken place
in Banjul, the Gambia. At the session, a representative of the
Association of Mauritanian Refugees in Senegal made a statement
on the continuing existence of slavery in Mauritania, reported
on the front page of the independent Observer newspaper (whose
Ghanaian editor had been deported the previous week, supposedly
because his immigration papers were not in order); the same
afternoon he was picked up by Gambian police and questioned for
several hours about his statement and his own immigration status
-- suggesting a worrying closeness between the Mauritanian and
Gambian governments. He was released only after intervention
with the Gambian government from international NGOs present at
the Commission.
While slavery may be particularly severe in Mauritania, as an
institution it remains widespread across the Sahel region, as
far as Sudan (where HRW has also reported on its existence), in
varying forms. It would be interesting to hear from others on
this list as to the prevalence of the institution and its
severity in countries such as Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad,
etc.
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