Legally, slavery has been abolished in Mauretania since 1981. However, in spite of the official ban, the serfdom system continues unabated, especially in rural areas of the West African country. The President of Mauretania, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, is cracking down hard on human rights workers who are denouncing the continuation of the feudal serfdom system. They are being systematically intimidated and vilified. One who has been suffered acutely from this crackdown is the Mauretanian human rights worker Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid.

The President of the anti-slavery movement IRA (Initiative pour la Résurgence du Mouvement Abolitionniste) openly criticised the continuance of slavery in his country at a conference in Paris in February 2009, and since then has come under huge pressure. His passport was not renewed and so his freedom of movement has been curtailed. He has on several occasions been warned by the police not to make any public criticisms in future. Also, criminal investigation proceedings have now been launched against him. As part of a media campaign against him, he has been suspected of collaboration with the Israeli Secret Service and has been reviled as a ’traitor to the fatherland’ and a ‘blasphemer’. The pressure against this human rights worker has indeed been stepped up since the publication in November 2009 of a report criticising the continuation of the practice of slavery in Mauretania by Frau Gulnara Shahinian, the United Nations special correspondent for Slavery. Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid was even targeted by a false medical certificate which implied that he was mentally ill. In addition, he was removed from his post as expert adviser on the national human rights commission, and his organisation the IRA has been banned by the authorities.

Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid works for ‘SOS Sklaven’ (SOS Slavery) as well as for other human rights organisations which actively campaign against slavery. For more than 15 years the ‘Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker’ (GfbV - Society for Threatened peoples) has been supporting the Mauretanian human rights organisation ‘SOS Sklaven’, which provides help and legal support for ‘serfs’ who have managed to escape. They urgently need such help, for their ‘masters’ are usually very rich and influential, and use their police and legal connections to get their slaves back.

The first measures against the continuation of the practice of slavery were instigated in 2007 by the then national President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi. He passed a law which set out penalties against the practice of serfdom. However, in August 2008the current State President, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, came to power following a military coup. Since then the law against slavery has only very inadequately been implemented by the authorities. About the issue of serfdom there is to be no more public discussion, for this damages the reputation of the country.

According to the estimates of the Mauretanian human rights worker, there are still around 550,000 slaves, who especially in rural areas have to work for hardly any wages, or nothing at all, as domestic servants or farm workers for their ‘masters’. These victims of slavery are mainly from the black African Haratin people, who make up around 40% of the three million people in the country.

Please call upon Mohamadou Tandia, the Mauretanian Ambassador in Germany, to commit himself to achieving an end to the practice of slavery in his country – and also to ensure that human rights workers who denounce continuing abuses should be no longer intimidated.

Translated by Charles and Gisela Russell