A/HRC/11/36/Add.2 page 15 53. During his visit to the Dar Naim prison, the Special Rapporteur heard many claims that most of the detainees were from the communities that were traditionally discriminated against, whereas individuals from the Arab-Berber communities escaped imprisonment thanks to the discriminatory application of the law and the protection provided by their family or tribe. Despite the absence of statistics on the ethnic makeup of the prison population, the Special Rapporteur observed that most of the prison population were black Moors and black Mauritanians. He was also concerned at the prison conditions, notably overcrowding, which prevented pretrial detainees from being separated from convicts and, among other things, hampered access to medical services. At the time of his visit there were 760 inmates, whereas the prison’s capacity was 380. C. Perception of new legislation and persistence of slavery-like practices 54. The adoption of the new Act criminalizing slavery was welcomed by civil society as an important step toward the effective eradication of the practice, which affects all the ethnic communities in Mauritania. Many individuals nevertheless deplored the official position that slavery is no longer practised in Mauritanian society but is rather a phenomenon of the distant past, of which only a few traces still remain. 55. Representatives of NGOs that work directly with slaves or their descendants expressed concern with regard to certain omissions in the Act that would prevent, on the legal level, the effective eradication of slavery. In the first place, they pointed out that the Act focuses only on the individual criminal responsibility of slave-owners and thus can only be applied through criminal prosecution, with no possibility for victims to take civil proceedings for reparation or compensation. They also noted that the Act does not take into account slavery-like practices, including the inextricably related issue of discrimination based on the social status of persons enslaved in the past and their descendants, who continue to be the victims of discrimination before the law, in their place of work and in their social life. They deplored the lack of reference in the Act to concrete application measures and the resulting lack of genuine supporting measures to publicize the Act and combat the effects of slavery on the attitudes and behaviour of the population in the long term. 56. During a meeting with slaves and former slaves, the Special Rapporteur heard several reports of the reluctance of the police and the courts to follow up allegations of slavery-like practices brought to their attention, either because of ignorance of the law or simply pressure from certain communities or tribes. The case of Ms. Tarba Mint M’Boyrick, born a slave in a family in the town of Guérou, in the Assaba region in south-eastern Mauritania, and the mother of two children she said she had been forced to abandon because of ill-treatment at the hands of her masters, provides an example of the authorities’ attitude. In October 2007 she lodged a complaint against the family for slavery and trafficking in minors. Although the police initially freed the children on the orders of the wali (governor) of Assaba, and following the family’s admission that the children were “slaves by descent” and had never attended school, the Public Prosecutor of the Court of Appeal in Kiffa ordered the release of the family and returned the two children to them on the grounds that Tarba Mint M’Boyrick had failed to bring them up but had abandoned them, whereas the family she had lodged a complaint against had fed and supported them.