Mauritanian authorities have arrested nine anti-slavery activists, accusing them of starting a riot in which several police officers were injured and a bus burned, Reuters news agency reports activist leaders to say.
The Initiative for Resurgence of the Abolitionist (IRA) movement’s coordinator Issa Ould Aliyine said the arrests were at attempt to use the riot in Nouakchott to discredit the movement.
“From the first hours of the riots, and even without knowing their cause or the details, an order was given to government media to start a campaign to link the IRA with the violence,” he said.
Reuters reports an official from Ksar, where the riot took place, to say that the protest which took place on Wednesday started when police moved squatters from the Haratin ethnic group, many of them former slaves, from an area they have occupied illegally for decades.
Slavery is a crime against humanity in Mauritania but the practice is still believed to affect between 4 and 20 percent of the population.
