The President of the Initiative for the Revival of Abolitionism in Mauritania (IRA), Biram Dah Abeid, has called on the UN to open an investigation into practices of slavery in his country, on the grounds that his fellow judges are doing nothing to tackle it.
By Mohamed Moctar
Mauritanian judges continue to turn a blind eye to the actions of slave traders, although their actions are intensifying, Dah Abeid claimed at a press conference in Nouakchott on Monday.
According to the IRA leader, Mauritanian authorities’ complacency with regard to the slave owners serves neither the interest of society nor that of Mauritanian justice.
Faced with this situation, the country’s elite must participate in the fight against slavery, he insisted.
Officially abolished in Mauritania in 1980, slavery was criminalized and punished by law in 2007 before being classified as a “crime against humanity” and deemed “imprescriptible” by new legislation in 2015.
A member of the National Assembly and second in the presidential election last June, Biram Dah Abeid is no less familiar with Mauritanian prisons where he has stayed for several periods for having participated in activities deemed illegal.
He is also the recipient of numerous prizes, notably that of the heroes against slavery and human trafficking awarded by the United States Congress and that of the United Nations for Human Rights for his “non-violent combat against slavery in Mauritania.”
MOO/cat/fss/as/APA