AFRICA-WOMEN: Police Harass Mauritanian Women's Groups

DAKAR, Nov 18 (IPS) - Mauritanian policemen, accompanied by Senegalese counterparts, moved on Thursday to prevent Mauritanian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from exhibiting pictures of dead Mauritanian soldiers in an exhibition against armed conflict.

The pictures, meant for display during the Fifth African Regional Conference on Women being held here, showed soldiers killed by authorities during the so-called 1990 Massacre in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, a short time after hostilities had flared between Senegal and Mauritania.

"During that period, the Mauritanian government took the opportunity to arrest, torture, and liquidate thousands of people, mainly soldiers belonging to the Poular ethnic group", explained Fatimata Mbaye, an attorney and vice president of the Mauritanian Human Rights Association.

"What the women wanted to do is show the pictures and say 'never again"', Mbaye said in defence of the women's attempt to show the pictures in the 'Peace Tent,' which has been put up to exhibit pro-peace themes, "We want unity within diversity and the respect of others."

The 11 Mauritanian women representing four national NGOs have been harassed by ununiformed Mauritanian police within the conference site as well as at their hotels.

Two of them were forced to leave the conference with police.

All of the women are Poular, one of four main ethnic groups (the others being Wolof, Sonyike, and Arab) in Mauritania.

Three of them, widows of men killed in 1990, have been taken to the Mauritanian Embassy in Dakar.

"We cannot return to the hotel because they have done the same to the Saharauis women. They took them from the Novotel Hotel and expelled them from Senegal", pointed out Maimouna Sy, secretary general of the Mauritanian Widows Collective, which was formed immediately after the arrest, torture, and killing of Sy's husband in 1990.

Four representatives of the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (RASD), including the wife of the RASD president, were expelled from Senegal on Wednesday following a dispute with Moroccan NGO members during a workshop.

Invited to the conference by FEMNET, one of the NGO coorganisers of the NGO Forum portion of the regional meeting, the Mauritanian women fear for their lives if they return to their country, which lies between Morocco and Senegal.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service