Obama: Free the Muslim Slaves!

by Charles Jacobs and Nick Petrocchi

Think health care is an important national issue? Well the people of Mauritania, a small country in North Africa, just had a national referendum on one of that nation's biggest concerns: the lingering reality of black Muslim slavery. As the polls closed, Messaoud Ould Boulkheir, a former slave campaigning for President to end governmental inaction against slave-masters, suspects the election was rigged.

Slavery has existed in Mauritania since before Arab armies from the Arabian Peninsula stormed across North Africa, conquering territory and peoples under the banner of Islam. In the process, all of Africans in Mauritania were converted to Islam, and hundreds of thousands of these were enslaved. While the Koran forbids the enslavement of fellow Muslims, in North Africa - just as in Western societies -- racism trumps religious doctrine. The slaves are chattel, wholly owned property of masters who can pass them on through their estates. Masters use slaves for labor, sex and breeding. Slaves are exchanged for camels, trucks, guns or money. Children of slaves are the property of their masters. Slaves can be given as wedding gifts.

Such was the case of Barakatu Mint Sayed, as recently reported in the UK Telegraph. Barakatu was separated from her mother when she was ten, and given to her master's cousin. Twenty years later, her daughter, Mulkheir, was also given away, forcing Barakatu to revisit her trauma once again.

Before Human Rights Watch became politically correct, the organization issued a report describing the three favored tortures Arab/Berber masters would inflict upon "uppity" slaves. Sensitive folks should not finish this paragraph: 1. The Insect Treatment: tiny dessert insects are placed in the ears of the offending slave, his head is bound with cloth and hands tied to prevent its removal. Slaves were often driven mad. Burning Coals: slaves were buried in sand and had hot charcoals placed near sensitive body parts. The Camel Treatment: slaves were tied to the shrunken underbellies of camels who'd purposely been deprived of water for days. The camels were then given to drink, and their expanding stomachs ripped the slaves apart.

In September, 2007, after years of pressure from abolitionist movements, led by our own Boston-based American Anti-Slavery Group -- whose testimony to Congress and public protests pressured the US government into cutting aid to Mauritania - the regime in Nouakchott declared slavery would be abolished. This was the forth time Mauritania "abolished" human bondage.

We, and our often imprisoned Mauritanian Muslim abolitionist allies at "SOS Slavery," thought the 2007 "abolition" was actually going to make a difference. It has, but not enough. Hundreds of thousands of people are still tied to masters or former masters. The American Embassy in Mauritania reports that the regime has never prosecuted a single slaveholder.

President Obama might have mentioned the plight of the Muslim slaves in Mauritania (and in Sudan's Darfur region) in his famous Cairo speech. Boulkheir, the former slave and Presidential candidate, is called "Mauritania's Obama." The AASG (www.iabolish.org) is once again campaigning for the US to intervene.

Charles Jacobs is President of the American Anti-Slavery Group, Nick Petrocchi is a research associate.