Now there are reports that the taliban linked and influenced Islamists are destroying the ancient artifacts of Timbuktu in the name of Islamic purification.
First Sudan...now Mali....what's next....Mauritania, Niger, Chad????
The dispute between Arab-Berber-Negro Mixed and Negro Sahelian Africa continues.
The Islamic Republic of Mauritania is a largely desert nation in West Africa bordering Western Sahara and Algeria in the north, and Senegal and Mali in the south and east. The majority of its population of 3.1 million people are pastoralists and live a precarious existence depending heavily on drought-prone agriculture, leaving them among some of the worlds poorest people.
Whilst there has been no definitive research on the extent of slavery in the country, SOS Esclaves estimate that approximately 18 per cent of Mauritania's population (over half a million people) live in slavery today.
Slavery has existed in Mauritania for hundreds of years and is deeply rooted within society across the country. The Haratine are the group most affected by slavery practices and are traditionally owned by Bidane, or white moors, the minority ruling elite of Arab-Berber descent in Mauritania. Historically the white moors raided and enslaved people from the indigenous black population and today, all cases of slavery in Mauritania involve people whose ancestors were enslaved before them.
Slavery status is an inherited status. This age-old distinction underpins the very nature of slavery in Mauritania whereby individuals are assigned to a 'slave caste' which is ascribed at birth. Those in slavery are devoid of all their fundamental human rights, are owned and controlled by their masters, and are treated like their property. They are forced to work for their masters throughout their lives and are never paid for their work. They do what their masters tell them to do or they are threatened and abused.
Men primarily herd cattle and work on the farmland of their masters, whilst women carry out an abundance of domestic chores. Girls start work for their masters at a very young age and throughout their lives continue to undertake all domestic duties, including fetching water and firewood, cooking, doing the laundry, caring for the children of their master, and moving the tents. They are first to get up in the morning and last to go to sleep. Enslaved women and girls face double discrimination, not only because of their 'slave-caste' but also by virtue of their gender. They are rarely permitted to leave the home of their master and are often subjected to violence and rape. Who they marry and at what age are also the decisions of their master. When they bear children, they instantly become the property of their masters and the cycle continues, with many of the children serving the master for their entire lives or being passed onto their relatives to serve as gifts.
Individuals subjected to slavery undergo a form of indoctrination ingrained from hundreds of years of tradition. They are erroneously told that under Islam if they disobey their masters they will not go to paradise. In reality, Islam prohibits a Muslim from enslaving a fellow Muslim, but the weight of cultural conditioning makes breaking from this societal norm and psychological tie a difficult endeavour.
Most people living in slavery are also dependent on their masters because they are dressed, fed and sheltered by them. In a vast country, much of it desert, it is extremely difficult to run away. Women find it particularly hard to escape for fear of loosing touch with their children. Those that do manage or choose to escape from slavery are left with few options and face an uncertain future. There are few employment opportunities and those escaping slavery often have no education and few prospects. Men can generally only get work as porters or night watchmen, and women as domestics or in sex work.
Deeply embedded discriminatory attitudes not only contribute to the persistence of slavery in Mauritania but provide the context for further marginalisation and social exclusion. Mauritania's stratified society means that even those who are former slaves or descendents of slaves still live under the stigma of their 'slave-class' and are ostracised within society. They suffer from degrading treatment, are frequently excluded from education and the decision-making process, and are prohibited from owning land or inheriting property; practices which render them powerless and keep them on the bottom rung of the economic ladder. Politically repressed and with no prospect of economic independence, those enslaved and formerly enslaved are unable to access their human rights and have few choices in life.
Read about Kheidama's experience
Slavery and the law
Slavery was first prohibited in Mauritania in 1961 after it achieved independence from French colonial rule and principles contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were incorporated into the Mauritanian Constitution the following year. It was not until 1981 that slavery was officially abolished by presidential decree (although slavery was not made a crime), making Mauritania the last country in the world to abolish slavery.
Successive military dictatorships continued to aggressively deny and ignore the existence of slavery in the country and failed to introduce legislation to criminalise it. In August 2005, a bloodless coup d'état paved the way for change with the newly formed transitional government holding the first ever public meeting to discuss slavery. Following on from the first ever democratic elections in March 2007, President elect, Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, officially acknowledged the existence of slavery and reaffirmed his commitment to addressing the issue as a matter of urgency.
In a historic step forwards for Mauritania in tackling slavery, a new law criminalising it was unanimously adopted by the Mauritanian Parliament in August 2007. The new law makes the practise of slavery punishable by up to 10 years in prison and states that anyone supporting slavery could be imprisoned for two years. Additionally, it provides monetary compensation to those released from slavery or victims of slavery practises.
I don't see any Haitian news related. Posted news, documents in the forum that could help the Haitian community to move forward.
This is the information and research section and the damn title SCREAMS AFRICA...why did you click on it???
Go read and post on a Haiti related thread........or start your own site with your own rules.
Or you can do the smart thing and peruse haitiXchange...and you will see that we discuss all type of issues and try to get a haitian view on these issues.
This is a site for all haitians inside and mostly OUTSIDE Haiti...and as such we have global interests.
Haiti and haitians can learn from what is happening in other countries.
updated 7/18/2012 5:55:05 AM ET2012-07-18T09:55:05
MBERA, Mauritania — The vast desert expanse of northern Mali has become a magnet for Islamic extremists who have tightened their grip on Timbuktu and other far-flung towns, imposing a strict form of justice that is prompting tens of thousands of people to flee what some are likening to an African Afghanistan.
Rattled recent arrivals at a 92,000-person makeshift camp here at Mauritania’s remote eastern edge describe an influx of jihadists — some homegrown and others possibly from afar — intent on imposing an Islam of lash and gun on Malian Muslims who have long coexisted with Western tourists in the fabled town of Timbuktu.
The conditions here in Mbera are grim, with many of the Malians sick, hungry and bewildered. But that is better, refugees said in interviews Tuesday, than the grueling life turned upside-down that an unexpected Islamist military triumph inflicted on their lives in a vast region in the heart of West Africa.
Al-Qaida linked fighters destroy 'end of the world gate' in Timbuktu
Refugees from such places as Timbuktu, Goundam, Gao and Kidal described witnessing repeated whippings, beatings and other punishments in the streets, ostensibly for having violated strict Islamic law, and some of those who fled said they had been subjected to this harsh justice themselves.
“They said: ‘You are thieves. Why are you out walking at this hour?’ ” Mohamed ag el-Hadj, a 27-year-old former soldier in the Malian Army recalled. He and a friend out for a stroll at 7 in the evening found themselves surrounded by two carloads of well-armed men. The men tied the friends’ arms behind their backs, bound them to a tree and forced them to kneel, bending forward, for the evening. In the morning, “everything was swollen.”
“It was scary,” Mr. Hadj recalled. “They insulted me, called me a savage, an unbeliever.”
When they found a cigarette pack in his shirt pocket, they beat him about the face. “For nothing,” the young man said. “These are their punishments.”
Living under rows of dirty blue-and-white United Nations tents or under makeshift sheet-and-stick shelters, refugees spoke of heavily armed men of numerous races, nationalities, and languages — “black, brown, yellow, white,” one said — now controlling the streets. One spoke of encountering Afghans, Pakistanis and Nigerians.
American counterterrorism experts express concerns that Mali could turn into a magnet for international terrorists, but they say that such reports have not yet been corroborated. The turmoil in northern Mali has likely drawn extremists from the region, though, experts say. “The concern is that these local groups will further establish a safe haven in northern Mali to serve as a base of operations,” said a United States official who asked not to be identified while discussing sensitive intelligence matters. “Then maybe northern Mali could become a destination for foreign fighters from the wider region and even further afield, but it isn’t there yet.”
'False religion'
The Islamists in Timbuktu have destroyed at least a half-dozen venerable above-ground tombs of holy men revered in the ancient city, proclaiming them contrary to Shariah, a legal code based on Islam. The destruction provoked outrage among the citizens and in international organizations. “The day they destroyed the mausoleums, they put sentinels everywhere,” said Hassan ag Sidi, a refugee.
Ali ag Diaba, a traveling musician who fled northern Mali last weekend, said he witnessed citizens being whipped and undressed in the streets of Goundam by the Islamists, who are taken aback by the Malians’ Sufi sect. Many Malians follow a line of belief that posits a more mystical, personal relation with the deity. “They persecute and torture people, under the guise of a false religion,” he said.
Speaking in the shade of a tent, he explained that “When they beat people and others approach” to protest, the Islamists “fire in the air to disperse them.”
The extremist ministate in northern Mali is the unexpected fallout from the collapse of what had been regarded in the West — mistakenly — as a stable African democracy with functioning institutions in the capital, Bamako. In late March, army officers angry over the government’s handling of a rebellion by nomadic Tuareg rebels in the north rose up in a coup d’état, installing a military junta under an American-trained officer after two decades of elected governments.
Expert: War on terror 'critical' point as al-Qaida looks to regroup in Africa
The military junta has since ostensibly stepped down in favor of an appointed civilian government. But it continues to wield undue influence in the eyes of outside governments, and beatings and arrests — particularly of critical journalists — occur regularly in Bamako, while the Malian Army from which the junta arose is in disarray, unable to respond to the loss of half of the country’s territory.
The Tuareg rebels, largely armed by the remnants of deposed Libyan leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s arsenal, have since been pushed out by their onetime allies, the Islamists, proving no match for the firepower and determination of the jihadist fighters who now reign uncontested over northern Mali. Some of those Islamists are homegrown members of Ansar Dine, a group that has been supported by Al Qaeda, experts say. Others are believed to be part of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, an affiliate known by the initials A.Q.I.M. that has a presence throughout the Sahel.
“A.Q.I.M. is composed of people from all over the world,” said a Tuareg leader in the refugee camp here, Mohamed Toutta. “We can’t fight the whole world.”
His son Mohamed, a soldier in the Tuareg M.N.L.A. army, said the Islamists were fewer in number, but better armed.
Sidati ag Mohamed, who once worked in Timbuktu’s tourism industry, said: “We don’t know these people who have come. There are a lot of Arabs and blacks from somewhere else. It’s like the United Nations. The M.N.L.A. can’t defend us.”
'We're like prisoners'
The African Union, through the regional Ecowas group, has discussed sending a military force to reunify Mali. Ramtane Lamamra, the African Union’s peace and security commissioner, told reporters this week that negotiations with terrorists had been ruled out but that officials remained open to outreach with other armed factions. “We do encourage Ansar Dine to distance itself from Al Qaeda and come to the table as a Malian national group,” he said, according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, the women of northern Mali are particular targets. Aishatta Abdou, a 30-year-old mother of six who left a week ago, was chased off the street at gunpoint in Timbuktu for walking without her husband. She described them as “well armed.”
“It was after that that we decided to leave,” she said. “When I understood that I could not go out anymore, I said, ‘Life is not possible for me here.’ ” Her friend, Fadimata Ouallet, seated near her under a tent, was forced out of a car by gunmen because she was the only woman in it, even though the men were relatives. They pointed a gun at her and said, “Get out or we will kill you,” she said. “I trembled all night, with the fear,” she said. “I can still see them.”
A young couple, whipped in the street in Timbuktu for walking unmarried, “were in tears,” recalled Hassan ag Sidi, a merchant who arrived in the camp in recent days. “But the Islamists didn’t stop,” he said. “In the end, they had to be taken to the clinic.”
For now, what refugees are describing as an Islamist reign of terror runs unchecked. Western and African governments cannot make up their minds on whether to intervene, despite repeatedly denouncing the situation in the north. The Malian government and the Tuareg rebels are similarly frozen in place. “They have completely turned our way of life upside-down,” Mr. Sidi said. “They have imposed a kind of religion on us we have never seen. You can’t even walk with your wife. We’re like prisoners.”
He and others said that even the spartan conditions at the camp are preferable. “The people who are still there, they are practically dead,” said Mohammed el-Mehdi, a former tour guide in Timbuktu who arrived across the border from Mali on Tuesday.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
This story, "Jihadists' Fierce Justice Drives Thousands to Flee Mali," originally appeared in The New York Times.
“A.Q.I.M. is composed of people from all over the world,” said a Tuareg leader in the refugee camp here, Mohamed Toutta. “We can’t fight the whole world.”
His son Mohamed, a soldier in the Tuareg M.N.L.A. army, said the Islamists were fewer in number, but better armed.
Sidati ag Mohamed, who once worked in Timbuktu’s tourism industry, said: “We don’t know these people who have come. There are a lot of Arabs and blacks from somewhere else. It’s like the United Nations. The M.N.L.A. can’t defend us.”
'We're like prisoners'
The African Union, through the regional Ecowas group, has discussed sending a military force to reunify Mali. Ramtane Lamamra, the African Union’s peace and security commissioner, told reporters this week that negotiations with terrorists had been ruled out but that officials remained open to outreach with other armed factions. “We do encourage Ansar Dine to distance itself from Al Qaeda and come to the table as a Malian national group,” he said, according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, the women of northern Mali are particular targets. Aishatta Abdou, a 30-year-old mother of six who left a week ago, was chased off the street at gunpoint in Timbuktu for walking without her husband. She described them as “well armed.”
“It was after that that we decided to leave,” she said. “When I understood that I could not go out anymore, I said, ‘Life is not possible for me here.’ ” Her friend, Fadimata Ouallet, seated near her under a tent, was forced out of a car by gunmen because she was the only woman in it, even though the men were relatives. They pointed a gun at her and said, “Get out or we will kill you,” she said. “I trembled all night, with the fear,” she said. “I can still see them.”
A young couple, whipped in the street in Timbuktu for walking unmarried, “were in tears,” recalled Hassan ag Sidi, a merchant who arrived in the camp in recent days. “But the Islamists didn’t stop,” he said. “In the end, they had to be taken to the clinic.”
For now, what refugees are describing as an Islamist reign of terror runs unchecked. Western and African governments cannot make up their minds on whether to intervene, despite repeatedly denouncing the situation in the north. The Malian government and the Tuareg rebels are similarly frozen in place. “They have completely turned our way of life upside-down,” Mr. Sidi said. “They have imposed a kind of religion on us we have never seen. You can’t even walk with your wife. We’re like prisoners.”
He and others said that even the spartan conditions at the camp are preferable. “The people who are still there, they are practically dead,” said Mohammed el-Mehdi, a former tour guide in Timbuktu who arrived across the border from Mali on Tuesday.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
This story, "Jihadists' Fierce Justice Drives Thousands to Flee Mali," originally appeared in The New York Times.
I don't understand why a Black person can be a Muslim. Islam has been a cancer in Africa and all Blacks. Arabs still call Blacks "abid" - including Black Muslims. BTW, most of the Blacks that sold blacks into slavery were converted Black Muslims in West Africa.
Note- Yes, I know about Christian missionaries in Africa. I am not a big advocate on those Christian missionaries either. However, no other religion has done the most damage in Africa and Blacks than Islam.
The first thing you do to a colonized and enslaved people is destroy their religion/belief system.
Then you force yours on them and it's a done deal.
After that you can have the negro christians and the negro moslems do the evil deeds for their masters in the name of Jesus and Mohamed (Piss be upon him)
