Slavery in Mauritania

Slavery in Mauritania is despite their repeated official abolition in Mauritania - most recently in 2007 - and continued concerns the descendants of enslaved generations ago and still not released people who ʿ Abid ( sing. Abd ). They serve the " white Moors " ( Bidhan ) as slaves. As a " black Moors " or Haratin be the former, freed slaves called, the amount to 40 percent of the population according to rough estimates.

Slavery is viewed by much of the Mauritanian population as a merely historical fact. The number of slaves in the country is unknown, but is estimated by human rights groups on the order of hundreds of thousands. According to Kevin Bales is the proportion of slaves in the total population, the highest in the world.

History and Society

The Mauritanian society is divided traditionally into hierarchical classes or status groups, while in horizontal strains ( Qabila ) in both the Arab- Berber Bidhan as well as the black African Soudans. In the 20th century, especially since independence, there have been considerable changes in these classes and tribal structures, which are effective as a defining element of society, however, in substantial parts to this day.

The ancestors of today's black Moors were members of various black African ethnic groups who had been abducted into slavery before generations. They worked mainly as herders, farm workers and domestic situations of their owners and adapted to them gradually to culturally. Like their masters they are today by the majority Muslims and are considered as Moors, not as members of the black African population ( Soudans or Afromauretanier ) Mauritania.

Traditionally operated the black Soudans slavery (see also Inner African slave trade ); whether they still do today, there are different statements. The Haratin be placed in the social hierarchy in two ways: as a group of Haratin and at the same time as tribal members of their former master, belonging to the group of warriors ( Hassan ), Islamic scholars ( Zwaya ) or vassals ( Zenaga ). There was Haratin who owned slaves themselves.

Since the 1930s, the slaves throughout Mauritania were allowed to move freely, which opened them better means of escape. In the predominantly dominated by nomadic lifestyle land they could settle down to the few French administrative post and get work as domestic servants or craftsmen. The small towns grew predominantly by -arrived slaves and Haratin. The tradition of slavery survived the French colonial period until 1960. The drought in 1968/69 contributed to the separation of slaves and their now impoverished gentlemen at.

From the 1960s, former slaves ( Haratin ) began to organize, especially produced in the early 1970s human rights organization El Hor (Arabic al - Hurr, "The Free " ), and there were protests against the system of slavery. Drought, famine and the spread of desert in the 1970s and 1980s (see famine in the Sahel ) and the rural exodus associated changes in the lives of many slaves who came into contact with the modern world as the cities. Slaves, who could not be fed by their masters, were released at this time, but of course will have a livelihood.

There were in Mauritania's history four attempts to abolish slavery through legislation. The first attempt took the French colonialists in 1905. 's Constitution in the country's independence in 1961, slavery is a second time, but only indirectly mentioned. The following law to slavery was adopted on 9 November 1981. In Article 2, the compensation of the " beneficiaries " regulated, so what should receive the slave owners for the release of her servants slaves in return. Just the idea that the like claims, presupposes the existence of inferior people as a given. At any of the three laws implementing regulations have been developed yet pronounced penalties for infringement.

The recent law of 8 August 2007, the first time slavery punishable. It was meant as a foreign policy signal to the United States and the European Union. The presidential election of March 2007 had already had the abolition of slavery as a campaign issue. The ratio of Islam was discussed to slavery. To this end, there are three different positions:

• Slavery is not prohibited in Islam.
• Islam keeps out of this question and can therefore be taken as neither legitimacy nor as a reason for the abolition of slavery in claim.
• Thirdly, Islam was once used to legitimize slavery, but the question must be discussed anew for today's conditions.

The law was highly controversial in Parliament, many MPs saw no wrong in slavery and just held them not to be appropriate. In everyday life, the law is often undermined by lengthy procedures. Thus, trials are delayed and the slave is responsible for the burden of proof that they are slaves. This rule protects the slaveholders.

According to the government today, there are at most "Traces of slavery " in the country; Mauritanian human rights organizations such as El Hor and SOS Slaves as well as international organizations such as Anti-Slavery International, however, see this differently.

Current situation

The Mauritanian organization SOS Slaves believed up to 600,000 slaves in Mauritania, which would correspond to 20% of the total population. The number is not verifiable.

A common name for male Mauritanian slaves is Bilal, after the eponymous Umayya ibn Khalaf of former slaves and confidant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

The treatment and situation of the slaves is different. There are both examples of " humane" treatment and cruelty. Slave children can be taken away from their parents and passed on or sold. Some slaves by their masters, it would be allowed to go away, but what they do not, because there would be little economic livelihoods in the freedom of the poor Mauritania. Others are held in place with threats and violence.

To this day, never a slave owner was convicted. Police and the courts supported in some cases even the slaveholder. After Sharia slavery is permitted, even if the slaves are Muslims. Muslims may simply not be re- enslaved. Some slaveholders expect compensation before they release their slaves to freedom. The government denied the existence of slavery and long obstructed the work of human rights organizations against this practice. The slavery expert Kevin Bales had to spend in the second half of the 1990s as a zoologist in order to enter and investigate to Mauritania can.

In 2005, the organization SOS Slaves was officially recognized. The 2007 law is slavery with up to 10 years in prison.

One reason for the long restrained commitment of the government is well aware that slavery in Mauritania is an important institution and helps to secure the power of the elite of the white Moors. A emancipation of the slaves and their merger with the living in the south of Mauritania Soudans or Afromauretaniern would shake the power of this elite. In particular, the question of the transfer of land from the possession of white Moors to the (former) would put slaves to allow them a livelihood and to compensate them. However, land is generally in short supply, so that the current owners not want to depart from it.

"In today's Mauritania, there is no slavery, but wherever you look, on every street corner and in every shop, in all fields and pastures sees slaves. Sweep and clean, cook and look after the children, they build houses and herding sheep, hauling water and bricks - they do all the work, which are cumbersome, uncomfortable and dirty. The economy of Mauritania overloaded only on their shoulders; only their never-ending drudgery allows the men to her comfortable life and even guaranteed the livelihood of those who hold no slaves. "