> NIGER: The government says slavery no longer exists,
> the slaves disagree
>
>
> NIAMEY, 24 Jun 2005 (IRIN) - Anti-slavery activists
> allege that anywhere between 43,000 to 800,000 people
> live in bondage in Niger, mostly among the Tuareg and
> Arab communities who live on the southern fringes of
> the Sahara desert.
>
> The government recently tightened up the law to outlaw
> and punish slavery, which was once an accepted
> tradition in local society. It insists that slaves no
> longer exist in this vast land-locked West African
> nation and is sensitive to suggestions that they still
> do.
>
> On 28 April, for instance, the government detained two
> anti-slavery campaigners who had been preparing a
> ceremony to mark the liberation of 7,000 former
> slaves, on charges that they were trying to defraud a
> British non-governmental organisation of 3.5 million
> euros (US $4.3 million).
>
> The leaders of the Niger anti-slavery organisation
> Timidria were quietly released on bail six weeks
> later.
>
> People who describe themselves as former slaves are to
> be found everywhere in Niger.
>
> And they talk openly about their friends and relations
> who are still condemned to unpaid servitude, beatings
> and sexual abuse.
>
> In the hamlet of Kawassa, a cluster of straw huts in
> southwestern Niger, Tafoussoussat Machar gazed at the
> nearby sand dunes and recalled the first 30 years of
> her life that she spent as a slave.
>
> "In the morning I'd pound the millet, go to the well,
> fetch the wood, cook the meal, return to the well, and
> in the evening I'd pound the millet again, and I was
> never paid," she said.
>
> "If I didn't obey I was beaten," Machar added,
> speaking in Tamasheq. "I never thought I'd be free one
> day."
>
> Born into bondage, like her parents, to a Tuareg
> family in the Tahoua region of southwest Niger, she
> was sold at the age of 20 to a second master for the
> price of 100,000 CFA francs (US $200).
>
> Machar said this man, who already had four official
> wives, used her as a concubine.
>
> Many men in staunchly Islamic Niger have up to four
> wives, as allowed by the Koran, but local custom also
> permits them to take a fifth woman as a concubine for
> their sexual pleasure.
>
> Machar's ordeal came to an end four years ago . She
> was found by her uncle, Ilibad Bilal, who threatened
> her new master with legal action unless he agreed to
> the woman's release.
>
> He decided to let Machar go.
>
> "A long time ago I too lived under white Tuareg
> masters, along with my parents, but finally I ran
> away," said the uncle, his head wrapped in a white
> turban commonly worn by Tuaregs in the region. "It was
> after attending a meeting with the people at Timidria
> that I decided I must help my niece."
>
> Slavery is an ancestral practice
>
> Bilal however did more than just save his niece. He
> also rescued her first son, who was fathered by
> Machar's first master, after threatening him too with
> criminal proceedings.
>
> Currently, Bilal is Timidria's representative for
> Kawassa, a hamlet of 160 people near the town of
> Tahoua, 500 km northeast of the capital Niamey.
>
> Asked whether or not slavery exists in Niger, Machar
> replied: "But of course! My mother is still there."
>
> Slavery is an age-old custom in Niger, practised by
> several of its ethnic groups. In centuries past,
> slaves were openly bought and sold, or kidnapped
> during armed clashes. They were considered to be part
> of the spoils of war.
>
> The slaves' children also became the property of the
> master, who could either sell or give them away to
> others, Timidria says.
>
> Before independence in 1960, the French colonial
> administration in Niger took action against the most
> flagrant forms of slavery. It closed slave markets and
> cracked down on human trafficking, but behind closed
> doors, the practice of bondage continued to be quietly
> tolerated.
>
> During the early years of independence, slavery was
> outlawed by the constitution, but was not subject to
> any criminal penalty. And because many of Niger's new
> leaders were from slave-owning families, little was
> done to stamp it out.
>
> Timidria was set up in 1991 by a group of young
> Nigeriens to combat slavery. The organisation claims
> to have 638 offices spread throughout the country.
>
> According to a study carried out last year by
> Timidria, with the backing of British NGO Anti-Slavery
> International, at least 43,000 people still live in
> bondage in Niger.
>
> Earlier field studies carried out by Timidria
> estimated that more than 800,000 people in Niger lived
> in conditions that were tantamount to slavery.
>
> Timidria says most of the slave-owners are local
> chiefs from the north and west of the country. This is
> mostly peopled by Tuareg and Arab tribesmen, many of
> whom still lead a nomadic lifestyle.
>
> About 20 percent of Niger's 12 million people live in
> the dry and dusty Tahoua region, where Timidria claims
> that slavery is still widespread.
>
> In a back yard crowded with goats and hens and donkeys
> in the town of Tahoua, Sidirali Alisbat, who heads the
> local chapter of Timidria, said: "Tahoua is the
> stronghold of slavery, the Tuaregs are the majority
> here."
>
> "The 25 percent of white Tuaregs in the nomad camps
> are often the masters of the black Tuaregs," he added.
>
> "The slave-masters have found new ways of exploiting
> people," said Alisbat. "They're not in chains any
> longer and sometimes they have good clothes. But they
> still work for nothing and have no right to take their
> own decisions."
>
> The master decides whom a slave can marry and whether
> or not the children can go to school, he said. Some
> are beaten, raped or subjected to threats.
>
> Authorities deny modern-day slavery
>
> But the government has a different view.
>
> "I deny that slavery exists in Niger," Mahamadou Zeti
> Maïga, the governor of the Tahoua region, told IRIN.
>
> "In the six years during which I have travelled across
> Tahoua, I have never seen a single case of people who
> feel oppressed or who have gone to the authorities to
> complain," he said. "This country respects the rule of
> law."
>
> Slavery was finally criminalised in Niger by a law
> adopted in April 2004. This threatens slave owners who
> hold people in bondage against their will with jail
> sentences ranging from five to 30 years.
>
> "Some smart Alecks hand in files so they can make
> money abroad," the governor said, in an apparent
> reference to the two Timidria leaders who were jailed
> on 28 April for "attempted fraud", but released
> pending trial on 17 June.
>
> Ilguilas Weila and Alassane Biga, respectively
> president and secretary general of Timidria, have been
> accused by Niger's National Human Rights Commission of
> extorting 3.5 million euros from Britain's
> Anti-Slavery International group.
>
> The money was aimed at easing the social reintegration
> of 7,000 people that Timidria had been planning to
> release from generations of slavery in a Tuareg camp
> in Inates, northwest of the capital, in the Tillabery
> region.
>
> But the Human Rights Commission maintained there was
> no longer any slavery in Niger.
>
> Shortly after the arrest of the Timidria leaders,
> Anti-Slavery International wrote a letter to President
> Mamadou Tandja, denying that it had been duped by the
> two men.
>
> Reacting to the men's' release, it said in a
> statement: "We urge that all charges against them be
> dropped. Slavery is a significant problem in Niger and
> we call on the government to work in co-operation with
> Timidria to end this serious abuse."
>
> New anti-slavery law fails to break taboos
>
> In the sumptuous entrance hall of one of Niamey's big
> hotels, opposition parliamentarian Sanoussi Jackou
> said the government feared a backlash from the
> pro-slavery lobby if effective action was taken to
> stop ancestral bondage.
>
> "Slavery exists in the homes of the Arabs and Tuaregs,
> even here in Niamey, where you can find young black
> people preparing tea, doing the housework or keeping
> shop for their masters without pay," he said.
>
> Jackou, the son of a Tuareg chief and a Hausa woman,
> is the founder of the opposition Niger Party for
> Self-Management.
>
> "Last month in parliament, not one of the MPs took the
> floor for the debate on slavery. Yet there are nine
> white Arab slave-masters and a dozen white Tuareg
> slave-masters in the chamber," he said.
>
> "Everyone knows they own slaves but no-one wants to
> talk about it."
>
> "They say that if we discuss this, it will smear the
> government," he added.
>
> "People are afraid of the Tuaregs because they have
> arms and staged a rebellion, so everyone wants to keep
> them happy," he said.
>
> The now-dissolved Air and Azaouak Liberation Front
> (FLAA) staged a four-year revolt from the northern
> reaches of Niger along the fringes of the Sahara until
> a 1995 peace deal.
>
> There was a rise in banditry and attacks on road
> traffic in northern Niger last year after one of the
> rebellion's former leaders lost his post in government
> and was arrested on murder charges. He was
> subsequently released.
>
> Far from the capital, Machar, the freed slave woman in
> Kawassa, is working hard to rebuild a normal life as a
> free individual.
>
> "I'm married now and I've had a second child," she
> said.
>
> Her first-born, now aged 13, is also happy to be out
> of bondage.
>
> "Back there I used to take the livestock to the well
> in the morning, and again in the afternoon, and then
> go out to bring them back," he said. "Here too I look
> after the animals, but here, with my mother, I'm
> happy."
>
>
> [ENDS]
>
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