Mauritania: 13 human rights activists arrested during protest against slavery – a call for their immediate release.

13 human rights activists were arrested in Mauritania for protesting against slavery and against impunity of the slaveholders. By now, they are being kept in custody for one week. As the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) reported on Thursday, nine protesters were injured during the police operation to end the protests in Arafat, a suburb of Noaukchott. The human rights organization calls for an immediate release of the prisoners. "The arbitrary arrest of the human rights activists shows that the Mauritanian authorities are not doing enough to fight this inhuman practice, despite of existing anti-slavery laws. The protection of slaveholders is more important to them than the safety of human rights activists," criticized Ulrich Delius, the STP's expert on questions regarding Africa. Around 500.000 Black African Haratin are still considered to be held as slaves in Mauritania. Most of them are women and children who are forced to do housework free of charge.

The Mauritanian human rights association IRA (an initiative to revive the abolition movement) opened criminal charges against the alleged slave keeper Aichetou Mint Saibott on 31st of July 2011. IRA accused her of enslaving the ten-year-old girl Ouaichita Mint Hamady. Both the neighbors and the child itself had reported of her being abused and exploited.

A cousin of the defendant – who worked at the local police station in Arafat – had informed the slaveholder and advised her to hide the girl and to contradict any accusations, so she claimed not to know the ten-year-old girl. Since the police took no attempt to free the enslaved child, human rights activists of IRA organized a peaceful sit-in in front of the police station – after which the slaveholder was finally arrested.

However, members of the slaveholder's influential family attacked the commissariat and the protesters during the night of August the 3rd 2011 and demanded her immediate release. The attackers – including Mahmoudi Ould Saibott, who is a close friend of the Mauritanian president – insulted the protesters as "dogs" and started to manhandle them. Finally, the slaveholder was released. The human rights activists kept up the sit-in until 4th of August, when the police arrested some of them and drove the group apart using batons and water cannons.