This is a serious declaration, with an unprecedented violence, and the international community
should react to it vigorously and without delay.
As far as the content is concerned, this declaration is also untrue for Islam is a religion of justice,
equality and peace according to all Muslim democrats, even if in some Muslim societies
minorities engage in injustices and instrumentalise religion to this hidden end. Yet Mauritanian
delegates in Switzerland maintain that “if equality between men and women cannot be realised,
it is because God wanted so”. Here there is an obvious contradiction in the rights policy of my
country. Why isn’t Mauritania like other Muslim countries which respect the laws and conventions
they ratify, without denying their religious identity? Why does the Mauritanian government
adhere to international texts which are superior to laws (including constitutional laws) and
commits to implement them, while its diplomats reject such references because of
incompatibility with Islam? Don’t the members of the government who ratify believe in the same
Islam as these diplomats?
To an other question of the UN commissioners regarding Mauritania’s programmes against
HIV/AIDS, the Mauritanian delegation replier: “The Mauritanian State does not have any
programme against HIV/AIDS besides abstinence as prescribed by the Holy Quran”!!!
However, the funds that were given to us by UNAIDS for the fight against HIV/AIDS have been
squandered by high level public officials and so-called legal advisers in the framework of
advocacy and awareness-raising programs which are often botched, if not even nonexistent. The
most famous inter-tribal corruption scandal remains unpunished. Because of our diplomats we
are back to adventurism in the public health sector, as they pretend to fight such a serious illness
with ideological arguments.
Regarding slave-trading, there are only a few Mauritanian high level officials coming from the
slavish community, the Hratin, which makes up unfortunately the majority of the population.
These descendants of slaves, like myself and like the Ambassador of Mauritania to Geneva, are
from time to time nominated to positions that are in fact the reward for assuming a false
testimony without too much scruple. That is why the rare Hratin who have been coopted for this
task are assigned to the denial of their community’s suffering and try, in vain, to stifle the voice of
the victims by ascendance of slavery practices which 20% of Mauritanians directly and the majority
of the population incidently suffer from. This way, the human rights minister and the diplomatic
mission of Mauritania worked on denying traditional slavery practices while supporting the
current modern slavery in Mauritania!!! Modern slavery is no less a criminal and degrading than
traditional slavery.
Moreover, the diplomatic mission of Mauritania to Geneva houses a person who is a slave or
descendant of a slave; this person is under the yoke of an official of the Embassy, a woman who
would be her master or former master. Hence, following the example of the Embassy of
Mauritania in Paris, whose accountant was able to exfiltrate to Mauritania a girl he held as a slave
in the last moment, similar presumptions have been made regarding the representation of
Mauritania on the territory of Switzerland.
Dear friends, this incident before the UN Council of Human Rights, without any intervention from
our side, spontaneously revealed the true face of the ethno-tribal domination system in