Local officials ban ceremony for freed slaves

A senior government official in Niger last week banned a planned ceremony to award certificates of freedom to nine slaves who were voluntarily freed by their master, arguing that slavery no longer exists in the poor West African country, a human rights activist said. "The Prefect of Tahoua region banned the ceremony on the grounds that there were no slaves in Niger," Iguelass Weila, the president of the human rights group (TIMIDRIA) told IRIN said. TIMIDRIA, which means brotherhood in the Tamachek language spoken by nomadic Tuareg tribesmen in northern Niger, has been active in campaigning to rid the country of slavery, a traditional practice which is now punishable by harsh prison sentences. Weila said the incident took place during a workshop for traditional chiefs on discriminatory practices organised by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Tahoua, 400 km northeast of the capital Niamey. "The Prefect opened the workshop with a speech in French, but surprisingly switched to the local Hausa language saying that slavery was an issue that had been commercialised by certain organisations to get funds and he would not tolerate any kind of freedom ceremony," Weila said. In November 2000, ILO organised in the capital, Niamey, a national forum for traditional chiefs at which existence of slavery in Niger was officially recognised. The chiefs subsequently committed themselves to the fight against it. A survey conducted by TIMIDRIA in May this year pointed to the continuing existence of 870,364 slaves in Niger, living in conditions of forced labour. That represented about eight percent of the country's 11 million population. The survey showed that most lived in the southwestern Tillaberry region, where the capital Niamey is situated and around Agadez in the desert north. In June, parliament passed a law which recognises "slavery and slave-like practices" as crimes punishable with a prison sentence of up to 30 years. Slavery is a long ingrained tradition in this poor landlocked country on the southern edge of the Sahara, which achieved independence from France in 1960.