Slave freeing event cancelled

2005-03-06 20:26

Inates - A human rights group in the desert West African nation of Niger called off what it billed as a mass liberation of 7 000 slaves after none showed up for the ceremony.

Slavery has been banned across Africa, but the practice of inherited servitude persists in the Sahara Desert nations of Mauritania, Niger and Sudan.

A local human rights group, Timidria, announced it would set free 7 000 Niger slaves during a Saturday ceremony at the town of Inates, then blamed government threats against local leaders for the absence of any slaves for liberation.

"The slaves and their masters have been scared by the government and it's for that reason that no slaves are present," Timidria President Weila Ilglas told reporters who traveled to observe the ceremony at Inates, 300 kilometres north of the capital of Niamey.

The government denied the charge.

"We're a state of rights, the government hasn't threatened anyone," said Mallam Ari Boukar, a top Interior Ministry official.

The United Nations, US state department and human rights groups say conditions of slavery persist in Africa's north and west. Niger formally outlawed the practice in 2003.

The American Anti-Slavery Group says more than 200 000 people currently labour as slaves on centuries-old Arab-African Saharan trade routes.

Unlike slaves once shipped across the Atlantic to work on plantations in the Americas, Sahara Desert slaves aren't often chained.

They inherit their ordeal, usually working a lifetime without pay for a single family or clan which keeps the slaves subjugated by isolation and ignorance.

- AP