Yesterday, someone forwarded me the link to this article on contemporary slavery in Mauritania, a country in Northwestern Africa. It was written just last week. I feel that this story is a perfect representative of how slavery is still able to thrive dispite laws that strickly prohibit it.
When slavery existed one to two hundred years ago, there was no law protecting the freedom of each individual. Today, about every country has national laws strickly prohibiting this practice, yet modern-day slavery still exists. Why?
The written word needs to be practiced and enforced; unfortunately, corruption plagues the government and police force in many developing (and ‘westernized’) countries. Abolition also comes up against years of tradition, culture and religion, as this article illustrates.
I do not believe this should be a point of discouragement, but an opportunity to look at the reality many modern-day abolitionist are facing. Lord, you are a just and righteous God. Please open our heart, mind and spirit to your truth and love.
Women laborers scrape for salt on the floor of an ancient lake in the remote Sahara Desert in Tichit, Mauritania, east of Mauritania’s capital, Nouakchott, Nov. 20, 2000. (Clement Ntaye/Associated Press)
Freedom’s just another Word. (Contemporary slavery in Mauritania) February 29, 2008 By David Gutnick, The Sunday Edition
The night of Aug. 8, 2007, seemed like a night for celebration in Mauritania, a vast desert country on Africa’s northwest coast. Radio, television and newspapers all proclaimed the end of slavery. Slave-owning was criminalized, and overnight, half a million people — a fifth of the country’s population — were officially freed from bondage.
But there was a problem. Those half-million newly free people didn’t own radios. They didn’t own televisions. They can’t read either. And the news — if they heard it — meant little anyway.
In Mauritania, despite good intentions and high-minded words, slavery is still thriving, as it has for 800 years. It is just taking new forms.
Dark-skinned men, women and children known as Haratine carry out orders under the threat of being beaten. They work as labourers and shepherds, as servants and cooks, as nursemaids and security guards. They are penniless and uneducated. Their masters are pale-skinned, Arab-speaking Moors.
The relationship is ancient, confusing and deeply entrenched, and it defines much of what goes on in this iron-rich, sandy country. Even the most modern and sophisticated of Mauritanians is caught in the tangled web.
My guide and interpreter, Mohamed-Sidi-Ali-François, is a computer teacher at an elite, American, private school in the capital city of Nouakchott. He is a tall, thin Moor in his mid-40s who studied at universities in Scotland and the United States. He’s full of energy on the morning in late November 2007 when we meet…
The rest of this article can be found at http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/slavery/mauritania.html. From this same link, you are also able to listen to the reporter and Mohamed as they are traveling throughout the country. I highly recommend it.
