MAURITANIA: Anti-slavery groups in Mauritania battle against social, political and religious obstacles

In the searing heat at midday, children in torn rags play among the trash in one of the poorest areas on the outskirts of Nouakchott. It is a shanty town, where people live on less than a dollar a day, and harbouring many slaves that either ran away or managed to buy their freedom from their masters. Corrugated iron shacks cluster among the sand dunes, and goats nibble at piles of rubbish. It is here that the anti-slavery group, SOS Slaves started a project to help women who escaped from slavery rebuild their lives. Aichana, a former slave owns a small shop here. She started it with money from the SOS group. Aichana is also part of a group of women - also former slaves - who have pooled their seed money from SOS slaves to form a cooperative that trades in cous cous and other produce. Aichana was born into slavery just like all her siblings. Her five children were also slaves because in Mauritania, slavery is perpetuated through the mother. Chattel slavery - where one person is considered another's property - has existed in the impoverished west African country for more than 800 years, since Arab-Berber raiders swept across the Sahara to subjugate black African tribes. Haratine, the slave caste, must marry who their masters say and can be given away to other people, bought and sold, or presented as wedding gifts. Children are often separated from their mothers and sent to work in other homes. Aichana, who is in her thirties, escaped just over a year ago. Her owner still claims her as property. "When I was young, very young, being a slave didn't bother me, because at the time I thought life was perfect, it was normal to be like that. I was looking to my master like a god, and I didn't think more of it. But when I started to grow up, and saw how other people lived, I started to feel inferior, and it started to bother me, and the more I talked to people, the more revolted I felt about my situation. I didn't have the means then, I didn't know how I was going to escape this situation. I constantly looked for a way out, until one day I found the right people who helped me," Aichana said. Aichana priority now is her children's future and education. She hopes that time will help erase the feelings of inadequacy they once had. It's people like Aichana that SOS Slaves is trying to help. "It's mainly the women slaves that we know, and that we helped free themselves of slavery. Once these women leave their owners and came to Nouakchott, they don't have the financial means to integrate (into society) so we thought of helping them, help them take charge of their lives and live an honest life. So we thought of starting revenue-creating activities, with their conviction and to their convenience," said Aicha Fa, one of the project coordinators. A visit to Aichana's house reveals the daily struggles she faces just trying to keep her children fed. The family lives in a hot corrugated-metal hut with only a thin carpet to sit on. There is no kitchen, electricity, running water, or visible toilet. But even in these tough conditions, Aichana's spirits are high, because she can now do whatever she wants. Everything she earns belongs to her, rather than to her master. Although banned by law in 1980, slavery has been perpetuated by poverty and rigid customs. No census exists for the number of slaves but estimates range from 100,000 to one million -- or just under a third of the population. Slavery has been reinforced by manipulating Islam to present obedience to the slave owner as a means of serving Allah. "Paradise under your master's foot" is a Mauritanian saying. Although some view slavery as people in chains from text-book pictures, slaves in Mauritania have no need to be chained up, because they get educated into submission. "We are a country where there was a caste-system. We are a country which had a caste-system, all the countries around ours are countries who were countries where, who are, who were, from a social organisation point of view, with a caste-system. We don't escape this rule," said Colonel Ely Ould Mohamed Vall, the head of Mauritania's ruling military junta. Slavery still remains in many parts of West Africa's arid Sahel region, such as neighbouring Mali or Niger, ranked among the poorest countries in the world. Many countries deny the practice -- Niger jailed anti-slavery activists, but Mauritania, Vall says, has signed contracts and international conventions to educate and enfranchise former slaves, or Haratines. "Also, there is an economic aspect of this problem: the poverty, the dependency, and we have acted economically, we have a Commissariat dedicated to poverty, and human rights, who concentrates on the population in need, the people weakened by the existence of castes, and who are weakened by poverty," Vall added. In the Cinquieme Arrondissement, or one of the poorest areas in Nouakchott, around 70,000 live with no running water. It is one of the most crowded areas of the capital, where disease runs rampant, and cholera outbreaks are not unusual. Many slaves that managed to free themselves and find a job of sorts now live here. Messaoud Ould Boulkheir is a former slave. He is the first Haratine to become a political leader in Mauritania. The Popular Alliance for Progress (APP) Party, which he leads, was one of the significant parties in recent elections. One of APP's main goals is the eradication of slavery in Mauritania. "It's a phenomenon that people live through, it's part of our mentality, it's part of our culture. This through all the components of our country, whether we are Arabs, black-Africans. Slavery exists, in a way or another in our society. There are people who consider themselves slaves, who sometimes even want to stay slaves, they find an advantage in it, I don't know which one, and there are others who are fighting, like me, to escape that fate," said Boulkheir. Promoting the abolition of slavery in Mauritania is a risky business. Both Boulkheir and the members of SOS Slaves have often been harassed by the authorities. "Unfortunately we've never had the right leaders, by that I mean progressive leaders, patriotic leaders, who see in the eradication of slavery a good thing for everybody for the Mauritanians and for Mauritania, not something they can use for certain people against others," Boulkheir added Slavery is still a taboo subject in Mauritania, and many people will not discuss it openly. Many things about Mauritania are changing. Democratic elections are around the corner, women are now able to hold seats in parliament, and lucrative oil reserves have been discovered offshore. The winds of change and development may also carry a glimmer of hope for the country's slaves, since some here believe that slavery can't be stopped until the chains of poverty that bind so many people are still in place. STREETSCENES STOCKSHOTS

ITN Source | December 4, 2006

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