Mauritania Still Has Slavery

MAURITANIA

First, or the Umpteenth

Ruling party candidate Mohamed Ould Ghazouani won Mauritania’s presidential election with 52 percent of the vote, the electoral commission said Sunday.

For the record books, it’s a historic first – the country’s first election to pass the torch from one democratically elected leader to another. But Biram Dah Abeid, who came in second with nearly 19 percent of the vote, called it the “umpteenth coup d’etat against the will of the people,” alluding to alleged irregularities, Al Jazeera reported.

Mohamed Ould Boubacar, who came third, said that “multiple irregularities… eliminated any credibility” the election might have had.

For many, especially Abeid’s supporters, the result was disappointing for another reason.

Though slavery was abolished nationwide in 1981 and criminalized in 2007, human rights activists say tens of thousands of black Mauritanians still live as slaves “owned” by lighter-skinned masters of Arab or Berber descent.

Ghazouani has denied the problem is widespread, while Abeid, an anti-slavery activist who is himself the descendant of slaves, made the issue a main focus of his campaign.