Freedom in the World 1999 - Mauritania

1999 Scores

Status: Not Free
Freedom Rating: 5.5
Civil Liberties: 5
Political Rights: 6

Overview

The Islamic state of Mauritania appeared both to court the international community and withdraw from its neighbors by establishing diplomatic relations with Israel and backing out of the 16-member Economic Community of West African states (ECOWAS). Analysts say the move to establish ties with Israel could prompt Western donor countries to look on Mauritania, an Islamic state that supported Iraq during the Gulf War, more favorably. No official reason was given for Mauritania's withdrawal from ECOWAS, but analysts said the country was unhappy with recent moves by members to turn the regional grouping into more of a monetary and customs union. ECOWAS wants to launch a single currency by 2004, and Mauritania could see this as undermining its economic sovereignty. Mauritania is considered one of the heavily indebted members of ECOWAS, which has largely been a political grouping aimed at defusing regional political and armed crises.

Mauritania's human rights record remains mixed. In January 1999, Ahmed Ould Daddah, a major opposition leader and 1992 presidential candidate, was detained after his Union of Democratic Forces held a rally that was broken up by security forces in the capital, Nouakchott. His arrest came two weeks after he was released from having been detained in December. His group was urging a boycott of municipal elections. In March, a court acquitted Ould Dada of threatening public order. He had been accused of spreading reports that the government had allowed Israeli nuclear waste to be dumped in Mauritania, which authorities denied.

After nearly six decades of French colonial rule, Mauritania's borders as an independent state were formalized in 1960. Its people include the dominant "white Maurs" of Arab extraction and Arabic-speaking Muslim black Africans known as "black Maurs." Other, non-Muslim, black Africans inhabiting the country's southern frontiers along the Senegal River valley constitute approximately one-third of the population. For centuries, black Africans were subjugated and taken as slaves by both white and black Maurs. Slavery has been repeatedly outlawed, but remnants of servitude and credible allegations of chattel slavery persist.

A 1978 military coup ended a civilian one-party state. A 1984 internal purge installed Colonel Maaouya Ould Sid Ahmed Taya as junta chairman. In 1992, Maaouya won the country's first, and deeply flawed, multiparty election. Maaouya's Social Democratic Republican Party (PRDS) ruled the country as a de facto one-party state after the main opposition parties boycotted national assembly elections in 1992. The incumbents maintained their grip on power through victories in the 1996 legislative and 1997 presidential elections. Mauritania's authoritarian regime has gradually become liberalized since 1992, but most power remains in the hands of Maaouya and a very small elite around him. Basic political divisions are sharply defined along racial and ethnic lines.

Relations with France were strained in 1999 after a Mauritanian officer in France was accused of torture. Mauritania expelled French military advisers and recalled its officers being trained in France, and reintroduced visas for French citizens. The officer was alleged to have tortured two people in a Mauritanian prison in the early 1990s.

Political Rights and Civil Liberties

Mauritanians have never been permitted to choose their representatives or change their government in open, competitive elections. Electoral provisions in the country's 1991 French-style constitution have not been respected in practice. The absence of an independent election commission, state control of broadcasts, harassment of independent print media, and the incumbent's use of state resources to promote his candidacy devalued Ould Taya's 1997 presidential victory. In deeply flawed 1996 legislative elections, the military-backed ruling PRDS won all but one of the 79 national Aassembly seats against a divided opposition. The lone opposition seat was awarded in what appears to have been a cosmetic concession by the ruling party. The umbrella Front of Opposition Parties dismissed the polls as fraudulent and boycotted the second round of the 1996 legislative polls and the 1997 presidential vote. The government in January 1999 ordered a rerun of local council elections held in the capital because of alleged fraud. The main opposition parties boycotted the election, and there was no explanation of what the fraud involved.

Mauritania's judicial system is heavily influenced by the government. Many decisions are shaped by Sharia (Islamic law), especially in family and civil matters. More than 20 political parties and numerous nongovernmental organizations operate, but government registration requirements may now be used to block human rights and antislavery groups. A handful of black African activist groups and Islamist parties are banned. The banned El Hor (Free Man) Movement promotes black rights and is attempting to transform itself into a political party. As many as 100,000 blacks still live in conditions of servitude. In 1996, the U.S. Congress voted to suspend all nonhumanitarian aid to Mauritania until antislavery laws are properly enforced. Black resistance movements continue to call for armed struggle against discrimination and enforced Arabization.

Prepublication censorship, arrests of journalists, and seizures and bans of newspapers devalue constitutional guarantees of free expression. Pressure on the independent print media, which are often critical of the government, continued in 1999. The state monopolizes nearly all broadcast media. State media forbid dissemination of allegations of continued slavery and criticism of Islam. Authorities, in August 1999, arrested Sidi Mohammed Ould Younes, editor in chief of the weekly Rajoul al-Chari, for publishing an article critical of the justice system. Authorities also suspended the independent weekly Le Calame from publishing for three months for the third time.

Mauritania is an Islamic state in which, by statute, all citizens are Sunni Muslims who may not possess other religious texts or enter non-Muslim households. The right to worship, however, is generally tolerated. Non-Mauritanian Shiite Muslims and Christians are permitted to worship privately, and some churches operate openly.

Under Sharia, a woman's testimony is given only half of the weight of a man's. Legal protections regarding property and equality of pay are usually respected only in urban areas among the educated elite. Female genital mutilation is widely practiced.

Approximately one-fourth of Mauritania's workers serve in the small formal sector. The government-allied Union of Mauritanian Workers is the dominant labor organization. The government has forcibly ended strikes and detained or banned union activists from the capital. Mauritania is one of the world's poorest countries. Its vast and mostly arid territory has few resources.