Published: 12/Feb/2018
Source: Human Rights Watch
(Nouakchott) – Mauritania’s human rights defenders face repression when they raise the country’s most sensitive social issues, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The issues include ethnic and caste discrimination, slavery, and the need for accountability for a campaign of atrocities against certain groups three decades ago.
The 73-page page report, “Ethnicity, Discrimination, and Other Red Lines: Repression of Human Rights Defenders in Mauritania,” examines the legal framework that allows the government to easily refuse legal recognition to associations it dislikes, on such grounds as engaging in “anti-national propaganda” or “exercis[ing] an unwelcome influence on the minds of the people.” Without legal recognition, associations are hard-pressed to rent a hall for a meeting or public event, obtain permission to peacefully protest, or obtain funding from foreign donors.
Extract from the report:
Obstacles to Obtaining Full Citizenship
In January 2008, the governments of Mauritania and Senegal began the formal process of repatriating some of the estimated 60,000 Mauritanians whom authorities expelled or who fled to Senegal in 1989 and 1990 during the Passif Humanitaire. In May 2011, Mauritanian authorities launched a nationwide census aimed at registering the country’s population in a biometric database, systematizing national ID cards and finalizing electoral lists.
Touche Pas à Ma Nationalité (TPMN) was founded in response to the 2011 census and subsequent national registration process, which TPMN says is aimed at undermining the citizenship rights of black Mauritanians. Government ministers told Human Rights Watch that authorities had refused legal recognition to TPMN because it, like IRA, “divides national unity.” They called “baseless” TPMN’s claim that the registration process is ethnically discriminatory. Human Rights Watch has not examined the merits of this claim. However, the UN special rapporteurs on racism and extreme poverty have described the ongoing registration process as discriminating against Haratines and négro-mauritaniens.
When the TPMN first organized rallies to protest the new registration process in 2011, authorities sometimes dispersed them with force, TPMN leaders said, causing injuries and the death by gunfire of one young protester in the town of Magama on September 27, 2011. Since then, TPMN’s leaders say, they have not tried to organize mass rallies, but have been able to conduct smaller-scale protests such as sit-ins.
Themes: Acquisition of nationality, Discrimination, Ethnic/Racial/Religious, Loss and Deprivation of Nationality
Regions: Mauritania
Year: 2018
