A detained Mauritanian slavery critic and winner of the Weimar Human Rights Award is in a life-threatening condition – Westerwelle should advocate for his release!

After a call for help from Mauritania, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) sent an urgent appeal to Federal Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle on Friday, asking him to try and persuade the Mauritanian government to release the detained anti-slavery activist Biram Dah Abeid. The President of the Mauritanian Abolitionist Movement IRA – who is also a winner of the Weimar Human Rights award 2011 – and 6 of his NGO-colleagues have been locked up in Mauritania's capital Nouakchott since late April 2012. They are being convicted for "endangering state security".

"Biram Dah Abeid is suffering from serious stomach problems and has lost more than 15 kilograms in weight since his arrest," said Hanno Schedler of the STP's Africa-department in Göttingen on Friday. "Until now, sufficient medical treatment has been denied. Although he was brought to a hospital emergency room three times within one month, he was only given sedatives instead of being examined properly. He is in great pain."

Biram Dah Abeid and his colleagues are a nuisance for the Mauritanian government, because they are continuously trying to organize public protests to make the police and the judiciary take action against slaveholders. Although slavery is officially banned in Mauritania, there are still more than 500,000 people being kept as slaves. The Mauritanian government systematically intimidates slavery critics and treats them like terrorists. Two assassination attempts on Biram Dah Abeid that were apparently planned by state security circles could be prevented only at the last minute in December 2011 and January 2012.