Thursday, August 16, 2012

Slavery still shackles Mauritania, 31 years after its abolition...

Mbarka Mint Aheimed first met her father on the day he forced her into slavery. The man who dragged her from her mother when she was aged five needed "a drudge" in his wife's mansion. Since Aheimed was the result of him raping her mother – one of his slaves – she was a natural choice, he told her.

"Because my mother was her husband's slave, his wife saw us all as personal property. It was completely normal for her to do what she wanted with us," Aheimed would later tell anti-slave activists in Mauritania. Living in a tiny hut that opened to the fierce heat of the orange dune-swept deserts, she worked from dawn to dusk. For 15 years, she never had a day off. "The family lived in a mansion but I was the only person who lifted a finger to work," she said.

Once she was old enough to start covering her head – but forced, against tradition, to leave her arms bare to carry out heavy lifting – one of the slaveowner's sons drove her miles into the desert and raped her. Later he would only take her far enough to collect firewood for making tea on their return.

(...)

And many do not identify themselves as slaves. "When people talk of slavery, they talk of chains, prisons, and threats. That was the slavery of those who had known liberty – the Africans who jumped into the sea rather than be enslaved in America," said Messaoud, who founded the abolitionist organisation SOS Slaves. "Today we have the slavery American plantation owners dreamed of. Slaves believe their condition is necessary to get to paradise." Full story...

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