Although Mauritania has enacted laws that criminalize
slavery and punish slave masters, this phenomena continues to exist especially
in remote areas, the government fails to provide appropriate conditions to
eradicate this phenomena but keeps on stalling in enforcing the laws and
protects the enslavers, even the president of the country denies its existence,
and the latest case of slavery and human trafficking discovered in Mauritania
is the story I’m about to narrate in this blog which talks of two Mauritanian
girls who escaped from their renter to whom they were rented by their enslaver:
Meymouna, tears in her eyes, says, We were informed by our
enslaver that we were rented to some wealthy person in the remote district of
Nbeikt Lahwash; Upon our arrival to our new master he told us that work will be
hard and we have to be raised in hardship so we can have the endurance it takes
to do our work, and that our new job will be a camel herder for myself and a
shepherd for my little sister. We set off to work, all day long under the
burning rays of the sun chasing camels. Our master wouldn’t allow us to take
water with us with the excuse that we have to learn to endure.
We faced torture and were denied eating and drinking for two
days upon the slightest mistake we make, when for example a camel or a goat is
missing, and we were not allowed to sit with the family members. As for
clothing, there was no need for it in the first place but he brought us clothes
almost every two years, and he was keen on humiliating us regularly, he did not
see in us a human being that deserved to live.
Meymouna adds that she was a victim of rape while she was in
pasture by some other camel herder in a desert far from the village where she
lives. Her masters and employers didn’t phase and never acknowledge it
considering it normal for her kind and no need to blame let alone punish the
poor camel herder. But Meymouna insists today that she will not give up her
right in punishing the man responsible whatever it costs.
This story brings to memory the story of Mbarke Mint Esatim
who was a victim of recurrent rape by her masters while authorities insisted on
taking no action against them simply because they are related to the president
of the country.
These stories are only a drop in the sea, for in Mauritania
Anti-Slavery Organizations continue to uncover cases of slavery but the
government keeps turning a blind eye.
No clear programs are put in place to rescue the enslaved
from their misery, nor to better the conditions of the previously enslaved who
suffer under the heavy foot of poverty, illiteracy, and deprivation. Human
rights activists who uncover cases of slavery are subject to continuous harassment
and imprisonment and the last example is the arrest of activist in the east of
Mauritania and putting them in the worst conditions where a leaked picture
showed one of them stripped naked and tied in one of the places they were held
in.
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