Fresh hope for slaves as Tuareg chief frees 7,000

Times
From Mike Pflanz


HALIMA Ahmed, a gaunt mother of three who guesses her age at 40, sits back against the mud wall of her low hut and sighs tiredly.

It is mid-afternoon. This is the first time today she has paused in her back-breaking work, collecting water, herding cows and pounding millet with a heavy club in the fierce 40C (105F) desert heat. Halima’s labours are not for herself, but for a nomadic Tuareg chief who owns her and her children, as he owned her parents and her parent’s parents.

She is a modern-day slave, bonded to her master, who rules a swath of northwestern Niger, a West African desert state classed by the UN in 2004 as the world’s second poorest country, with the highest birth- rate. Up to 870,000 of its population of 12 million are slaves.

But today 7,000 will be freed, at a dusty ceremony besieged by the wild harmattan winds 600km northwest of the capital Niamey. It is the first time since the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade that such a number of slaves will be voluntarily given up by their master, after a change in the law to make slavery punishable by a 30-year jail term.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1511092,00.html