Two lawmakers jailed over racial bias claims

Two female opposition lawmakers in Mauritania have been sentenced to four years in prison after insulting the President and making claims of racial bias, their lawyers told AP. The women, Mariem Cheikh and Ghamou Achour, were accused of describing President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani on social media as the mentor of ‘apartheid in Mauritania’, reports africanews. The two are members of the human rights group, the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement. They were charged last month with ‘attacking the symbols of the state’ and ‘calling for gatherings with a view to undermine public security’. The two lawmakers had called in several social media posts for Ghazouani's removal and accused the Arab-dominated justice system of treating black citizens and descendants of slaves as second-class citizens. In its decision late on Monday, the court in the capital Nouakchott also ordered the removal of digital content, the confiscation of their phones and the closure of their online accounts. The lawmakers’ attorneys – Mohamed Miske, Yaghoub Sèïf and Moctar Ely – confirmed the verdict of the trial. The government has not commented on the conviction. The West African nation has long been denounced for human rights abuses, with the continuous existence of slavery casting a long shadow over its history. For centuries, the country’s economic and political elite of Arab and Amazigh people enslaved black people from the northwest Sahara. Mauritania outlawed slavery in 1981, the last country in the world to do so. But the practice continues, human rights groups say, with around 149 000 people in modern slavery in this nation of less than 5m, according to the 2023 Global Slavery Index.

Full africanews report