Culture

Last to abolish slavery, Mauritania still hunts anti-slavery activists

The institution of slavery, though abolished some 37 years ago in Mauritania, still has significant scars on the country’s landscape

Published

6 years ago

July 23, 2018

Africa News Watch

The institution of slavery, though abolished some 37 years ago in Mauritania, still has significant scars on the country’s landscape.

The effect of the discredited practice came to the fore recently as two anti-slavery activists freed from prison in Mauritania vowed an all-out fight to rescue their nation from one of the world’s worst slavery rates, saying jail and torture were no deterrent.

Mauritania was the last nation to abolish slavery, outlawing it in 1981, and more than two in every 100 of its people still live as slaves, according to the 2018 Global Slavery Index.

Human rights groups say government made no effort to stamp it out and arrests people who speak out against it.

Abdallahi Matallah Saleck and Moussa Biram were jailed for their alleged role in a protest and charged with inciting riots and rebellion. They spent two years in a remote desert prison where they say they suffered horrible abuse.

“They tortured us, they did everything they could so we would back down. But we will never, ever back down,” Biram told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Less than a week after being released, both were back on the streets of Nouakchott, encouraging fellow members of the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA) to stay strong.

“The fight has just begun,” Biram said adding he is not in good health and has injuries from torture and beatings. “I can’t even stand up because of my legs which people hit with batons.”

A government spokesman said allegations of torture were false and an independent body called the National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture had visited the detention site in 2017 and found no human rights violations.

Government previously denied making arbitrary arrests and said that it prosecutes “unlawful and unregistered organisations that provoke riots, chaos and insecurity.”

Because government refused to register the IRA as an organisation, the men could be jailed at any time, said Francois Patuel of Amnesty International.

“We know we’re not safe, but we are not afraid,” Saleck told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“This is our country no matter what and we have to fight against discrimination and slavery,” he said.

Slavery in Mauritania follows racial lines, with black descendants of ethnic groups from the country’s south typically enslaved by lighter-skinned Mauritanians.

Some Mauritanians are born into slavery and spend their lives as domestic or farm workers.

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Culture

Kenyan court convicts housemate of slain LGBTQ activist of murder

Published

6 hours ago

December 4, 2024

Isaac Dachen

A Kenyan court has found the housemate of slain LGBTQ activist, Edwin Kiptoo, also known as Chiloba, who was killed in 2023, guilty of high-profile murder.

Eldoret High Court, which gave the ruling on Wednesday, found Jacktone Odhiambo, a freelance photographer, guilty of the murder of Chiloba, nearly a year after the shocking murder, which sparked global condemnation in the LGBTQ community in the conservative East African nation.

The court found Odhiambo guilty of intentionally causing Chiloba’s death, meeting all the requisite elements of murder under Section 203 of the Penal Code.

The body of Chiloba was found in a metal box in the western city of Eldoret in early January 2023 and shortly after, Odhiambo was arrested and charged with the crime while the police believed he had been in a relationship with Chiloba, and was accused of carrying out the murder between the night of December 31 and January 3, 2023.b

The prosecution led by Mark Mugun, presented evidence from 23 witnesses, including DNA profiles that linked the suspect to the crime.

Autopsy results revealed Chiloba died from asphyxiation, with investigators uncovering his body stuffed in a metal trunk on January 4, 2023, along a roadside in Eldoret.

Five people were arrested in connection with the murder of Chiloba including Odhiambo, who reportedly was a close friend and Chiloba’s partner.

The prosecution relied on key evidence which included DNA extracted from Chiloba’s body and personal items, showing a mixture of his blood and the suspect’s own, while testimony from the government chemist further solidified the link, detailing the genetic analysis of materials recovered at the crime scene.

The Office of the Director of Public Prosecution confirmed the ruling in a posting on X.

“My client has been found guilty of murder,” Sammy Mathai, Odhiambo’s lawyer, told reporters.
“We are going back to court on Dec. 16 for sentencing.”

Culture

France returns 3,500 ancient artefacts to Ethiopia

Published

2 days ago

December 2, 2024

Isaac Dachen

France has begun the repatriation of over 3,500 archaeological artefacts to Ethiopia after they were taken from the county in the 1980s to Paris for study.

French Foreign Minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, who handed over two prehistoric stone axes, called “bifaces”, and a stone cutter to Ethiopia’s Tourism Minister Selamawit Kassa, during a visit to the national museum in Addis Ababa, noted that the gesture stemmed from the two countries longstanding bilateral agreement on cooperating in the fields of archaeology and palaeontology.

The artifacts which are stored at the French Embassy in Addis Ababa, will be delivered to the Ethiopian Heritage Directorate on Tuesday, Kassa said.

“This is a handover, not a restitution, in that these objects have never been part of French public collections,” Laurent Serrano, Culture Adviser at the French Embassy, said during the handover ceremony.

“These artifacts, which date back between 1 and 2 million years, were found during excavations carried out over several decades at a site near the Ethiopian capital,” he added.

The tools are “samples of nearly 3,500 artefacts from the excavations that were carried out on the Melka Kunture site”, a cluster of prehistoric sites south of the capital that were excavated under the direction of a late French researcher, Barrot said.