03/23/2016

Winner of the Weimar Human Rights Prize in detention for 500 days on Good Friday (Press Release)

Mauritanian human rights activists will not be brought down – Slavery critics must be set free!

Protests against the imprisonment of IRA-Mauritania activists. Human rights activists Biram Dah Abeid and Brahim Ramdhane have been in detention for 500 days on Good Friday © Archive

Although they have now been imprisoned for almost 500 days, the Mauritanian slavery critics Biram Dah Abeid, winner of the Weimar Human Rights Prize 2011, and his deputy Brahim Ramdhane, will not be brought down: According to the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), they did not compromise or agree to cooperate with the state security agencies in the northwestern African country. The Göttingen-based international human rights organization demands the prisoners to be released immediately.

“Instead of taking effective measures to fight slavery and to put slaveholders behind bars, it is the critics who are criminalized and imprisoned. There are attempts to silence human rights activists – although, by Mauritanian law, it is the crimes against humanity that should be punished,” criticized Ulrich Delius, the STP’s Africa-expert, in Göttingen on Wednesday. “Mauritania’s policy is shameful – and a clear violation of international standards regarding the treatment of human rights activists.” In order to be released, the President of the human rights organization IRA-Mauritanie (Initiative pour la Résurgence you Mouvement Abolitioniste) and his deputy would have had to cooperate with the state authorities and the security agencies – but they refused.

Together with other human rights activists, the two of them were arrested in connection with a demonstration against slavery in the town of Rosso on November 11, 2014. Biram Dah Abeid had not taken part in the demonstration himself. He had merely been called to settle a dispute between demonstrators and the police. The dispute had arisen when protesters tried to enter the city of Rosso to present the local governor with a resolution against slavery.

Despite their attempts to mediate, Biram Dah Abeid and Brahim Ramdhane were sentenced to two years imprisonment in an unfair trial. Thus, the human rights activists were accused of working for an “illegal organization”. “The fact that IRA-Mauritanie is still not officially recognized as a non-governmental organization, five years after the application documents were submitted, is not fault of the human rights organization. The authorities are deliberately obstructing the procedure,” said Delius.

Over the past year and half, many governments from all over the world, as well as the United Nations, have demanded the imprisoned activists to be released. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs even honored Biram’s organization with its human rights prize in December 2015. 

 

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