More Africans are risking transatlantic crossings to Europe after Mauritania’s military coup last week, according to Jerome Dukiya, a Catholic priest in the port town of Nouadhibou.

Two years ago, Nouadhibou was one of the most highly-trafficked departure points for would-be migrants trying to escape to Europe by boat.

Since the numbers attempting the crossing from Nouadhibou, as well as deaths at sea, spiked in 2006, the Spanish government and European border security agency, Frontex, have helped Mauritanian officials tighten its coastline patrol, rescuing, and turning back would-be migrants.

But Dukiya says people are still finding ways to escape, and more so now after a coup on 6 August, when army officers arrested President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abadallahi in his home. Top members of the president’s former guard have since declared power through a military council. President Abdallahi remains in detention.

“When people see that border guards are less vigilant, or simply not there, they [would-be migrants] take advantage of the more open coastline to flee.” The Catholic priest says the national military takeover has diverted attention from securing the country’s borders.

“I know when people have left to try and make it to Europe by sea because I will not see them at church for one to two weeks. Since the coup, less are coming to services.”

The head of the UN International Organization for Migration in Nouakchott, Traore Abbas, says while it is too soon to measure how many more are trying to leave illegally, the numbers will jump.

“Anytime you have changes in maritime surveillance, there will be changes in migration patterns. We expect the numbers who are repatriated [to Mauritania] to increase.”

On 13 August, more than 100 African migrants arrived on the shores of Tenerife beach in the Spanish Canary Islands, according to Spanish police, bringing the total to more than 400 arrivals, from unspecified countries, this week.

Turkish media reported earlier this week the capture of 30 migrants at sea, a number from Mauritania, earlier this week.

During the first seven months of 2008, more than 7,000 migrants reached Spain by boat, about 10 percent less than last year, and nearly 60 percent less than 2006, according to the Spanish government.

Representatives of the European Union (EU), one of Mauritania’s main partners in its efforts to control clandestine migration, have said the recent coup threatens its more than US$200 million in aid.

IRIN 

Recent visits between coup leader Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz and leaders from the African Union, League of Arab States, United Nations, and Mauritania’s major donors have prompted both protest and promises.

Soldiers arrested President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi last Wednesday after his attempt to dismiss high-ranking military from his personal guard. The president remains in detention as of Monday. Also arrested, but since released, were Prime Minister Yahya Ould Ahmed Waghf and Moussa Fall, the government director in charge of overseeing the return of thousands of Mauritanian refugees.

Starting in 1989, tens of thousands of Mauritanians fled brutal army crackdowns and ethnic border clashes near Senegal. One of Abdallahi’s campaign promises last year was to bring home these refugees and to help them readjust to life in Mauritania after almost two decades in exile.

Abou Ba, 22-years old, says he was five years old when his ethnic Pulaar family of herders fled.

Ba resettled in Mauritania one month before the latest coup. “We are all worried. It was a military regime [Maaouya Ould Taya government] that pushed us out and now it’s another military takeover. We were promised by the president [Abdallahi] that we would be treated equally, that we are all Mauritanians.”

As a part of the reintegration process, a Mauritanian government initiative was underway to identify thousands of refugees. Ba was prepared to apply for his national identity papers. “But now, we need to wait. Again.”

Coup leader Aziz has said that the newly-formed military council will respect the continued repatriation and rights of refugees. About 4,000 of the expected 24,000 have returned.

But refugee camp leader, Amadou Samba Ba, speaking with IRIN from Dodel, Senegal, says he will not send any groups to Mauritania until there are guarantees for the refugees’ safe return.

Aziz led the 2005 coup that deposed Maaouya Ould Taya, who faces a trial launched from New York in June 2007 for alleged ethnic cleansing crimes. In recent months, ruling party in-fighting grew more rancorous after a May government reshuffling that brought to power a dozen ministers who served Ould Taya.
Abdel Nasser Ould Outhman Yessa was arrested in absentia ten years ago, when Ould Taya was still power, for his work as an activist with the Nouakchott-based anti-slavery group, SOS Exclaves. Now based in Dakar, Senegal the human rights lobbyist says while he condemns the military takeover, he understands its roots.

“In recent months, Sidi [Ould Cheikh Abdallahi] has made overtures to Islamist groups, and brokered power exchanges with Ould Taya’s previous ministers. If this coup had not happened, a return to power from Ould Taya would have been inevitable.”

Having been barred for years, Islamists were allowed to set up a political party last year under the new Abdallahi government.

Yessa says the prospect of a return of Ould Taya’s men to power has been worrisome, but so is the trend of constant coups in Mauritania. Changes of power have typically taken place through military takeovers since the country gained independence in 1960.

After the 2005 coup, a transitional military council ruled until Abdallahi’s March 2007 election to power, which monitors declared to be largely free and fair.

The most recently-formed military council led by Aziz has pledged that it will hold, in its words, transparent elections that respect the rule of law.

But these declarations have not stemmed denunciations from the African Union (AU), which has suspended Mauritania’s membership in the AU; the United States, which cut off more than US $20 million in non-humanitarian aid last week; or the United Nations and European Union, whose representatives have publicly condemned the prospect of a one-sided illegitimate election.

IRIN

Straddling Arab and sub-Saharan Africa, the desert nation of Mauritania has had two changes of government in three months, ending in a military coup earlier this week. Ex-presidential guard leaders have formed a military council, which they say has assumed power.

President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi remains in detention as of Friday, and a military blackout of state media continues.

Soldiers detained the president on Wednesday, only hours after he tried to dismiss his top four personal military guards.

Members of the League of Arab States and the African Union are scheduled to meet with coup leader Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz on Friday. The United Nations, among others, have asked for Abdallahi’s immediate release.

The United States announced on Thursday it will cut off more than US $15 million in non-humanitarian aid, while the European Union has said the coup threatens its recently-approved more than US $200 million in assistance, pledged over the next five years.

Mauritania’s three million inhabitants are concentrated in the capital, Nouakchott, and in villages and nomadic tent communities scattered throughout the desert.

Despite significant mineral deposits that form more than half of the country’s exports, and recent small-scale oil operations, employed Mauritanians, on average, earned about two dollars a day in 2006, according to the World Bank.

Mauritania ranked 137 out of 177 in the United Nation’s latest ranking of living conditions around the world, which measures life span, access to education and spending power.

Political feuding

This week’s military coup came after a May government reshuffle that appointed new government ministers, many of whom had served under the iron-fisted Maaouya Ould Taya during his 21-year rule; a July no-confidence vote against the two-month old government, which then resigned; an ensuing threat by the president to dissolve the National Assembly if the no-confidence vote was upheld, and the resignation of 48 ruling party deputies earlier this week.

Coup leader Aziz had also led the 2005 coup that deposed Ould Taya, accused of ordering violent crackdowns against his opponents.

Mauritania’s 2007 election that brought Abdallahi to power was widely praised as a democratic page turner that ended more than two decades of brutal authoritarian rule, and two years of transitional military rule.

Election observer Limam Mohamed Cheikh says the military was instrumental in electing Abdallahi and most of the lawmakers. Cheikh says the military has, until the president’s attempt to dismiss its top leaders on Wednesday, exercised unchallenged control of Mauritanian politics.

Pressures and protest mount

Dissident ruling coalition party members from the National Party for the Defense of Democracy recently tried to organise a parliament session to create a commission to investigate the country's response to the rising cost of living.

Like many of its arid desert neighbours, Mauritania faces rising food and fuel prices, and shrinking cultivable land due to drought and flooding, and harmful farming techniques.

According to the U.S-based famine monitoring group, FEWSNET, in recent good-harvest years, Mauritania still imported about 70% of its food.
Flooding last year displaced thousands, wiped out crops and killed livestock. In addition, rising global food and fuel prices led the U.N. World Food Program to predict last March a year of record hunger across Mauritania.

After only seven months in power, Abdallahi’s government—the first to come to power in free and fair elections since independence in 1960— faced food riots last November.

The prime minister’s office issued a statement accusing the opposition of orchestrating riots in the south.

One month later in January, the first wave of refugees started returning to Mauritania.

Tens of thousands of mostly black Mauritanians fled border fighting, and a brutal army crackdown in 1989, most settling in tent communities in Senegalese border towns, and in Mali.

Abdallahi’s government has promised to strengthen health and education services to absorb the more than 30,000 expected to return. Approximately 4,000 have returned, thus far.

Security

Tourism has dropped off after a string of recent alleged terrorist attacks, which included last December’s murder of four tourists and an attack earlier this year on a nightclub near the Israeli embassy.

Mauritania is one of only three Arab states to maintain diplomatic relations with Israel.

Critics have recently become more outspoken about how President Abdallahi has handled these attacks.

Citing security concerns, authorities cancelled the annual Lisbon-Dakar race car rally last January, which the director of Mauritania’s tourism industry, Cissé Mint Cheikh Ould Beide, estimates cost the country almost US $5 million in lost revenue.

Less than two weeks after the 2007 democratically-elected government took office, the country had its largest drug bust to date. Police found more than US $100 million worth of cocaine 1 May abandoned at an airport in the port town of Nouadhibou.

Sid'Ahmed Ould Taya, Mauritania’s police representative of the Lyons-based international crime fighting organization, INTERPOL, was arrested as a part of the investigation.

West Africa’s U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime has said that drug money can easily infiltrate corridors of power in West Africa, with its poorly paid security forces, lack of equipment to patrol long borders, and weak justice systems.

IRIN

Ahmed Ould Neda, reporter of Akbar Info, a Nouakchott-based independent news agency was on August 7, 2008 arrested and detained by the Mauritanian police while covering a demonstration against the new military regime in the country.
Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)’s correspondent reported that Neda’s camera with pictures of the police assault was confiscated. 

The demonstration had been organized by a broad coalition of four political parties against a coup d’état that ended the young democratically elected regime of President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi.

On August 6, a group of military officers led by General Mohammed Ould Abdul-Aziz, former head of the presidential guard toppled President Abdallahi’s administration after he (General Abdul-Aziz) and three other senior officers were dismissed.

However, another demonstration in support of the takeover on the same day and led by General Mohammed Ould Abdul-Aziz went on without interruption.

The arrest and detention of Neda brings to three, the number of journalists detained in Mauritania. Two other journalists, Mohamed Nemar Omar, and Mohammed Ould Abdelatif, editor and reporter respectively of the “Al Houriya” an Arabic newspaper have been in prison since July 23, 2008 over an article they published relating to corruption in judiciary of the country.

MFWA is deeply concerned about the highhandedness displayed by the police in Mauritania. We are requesting for the immediate release of the journalists.

Media Foundation for West Africa  

Mauritania's President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi and Prime Minister Yahya Ould Ahmed Waghf were arrested Wednesday in a military coup in Nouakchott, the country's capital. The coup has shut down state radio and television.

"The security agents of the BASEP [Presidential Security Battalion] came to our home around 9:20 and took away my father," Amal Mint Cheikh Abdallahi said, confirming that presidential guardsmen seized her father.

Soldiers gathered at the presidential palace after Abdallahi replaced senior army officers during a political crisis in the northwest African country, one of the continent's newest oil producers which also mines iron, copper and gold.

A state council is forming under the command of former presidential guard chief Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz. The council's "Statement No. 1", which was broadcast by Gulf-based al-Arabiya television, announced that Abdallahi is now a "former president" and that his previous decision of sacking Abdelaziz as the head of the presidential guard had been voided.

The country, which has a long history of military coups, staged free elections in June 2007, two years after a previous coup.

Wikinews

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/

International leaders, heads of states and human rights lobbyists have condemned the military ouster of Mauritania’s President Sidi Mohamed ould Cheikh Abdallahi, and Prime Minister Yahya ould Ahmed Waghf on 6 August, while analysts question how the latest political shake-up will affect a country that is reeling from rising food and living costs, as it reintegrates thousands of refugees.

The coup started just hours after a presidential decree early on Wednesday that declared the dismissal of Mauritania’s top four military leaders. By the morning, soldiers had barricaded the presidential palace on Wednesday, according to the president’s daughter, Amal Mint Cheikh Abdallahi.

In a phone call with IRIN early Wednesday, Abdallahi confirmed her father’s arrest, “We are trapped in our home with soldiers in our kitchen and bathrooms. Our cell phones were confiscated. This is a coup d’etat - nothing more or less.”

During the day, coup leaders announced the creation of a state council to be led by head of the presidential guard, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who has said in interviews with European media that the takeover was not a coup, but rather an attempt to restore security. When asked about the military’s motivations for the coup, he responded, in his words, that the country is confronted with a series of security problems, including terrorism, that only the army is capable of eradicating.

The coup follows a May government reshuffle that appointed Waghf prime minister; a July no-confidence vote against the government, which then resigned; an ensuing threat by the president to dissolve the National Assembly, and the resignation of almost 50 deputies earlier this week from the ruling party.

President Abdallahi came to power 2007 in the first democratic change of government since independence in 1960. This was widely regarded as a fresh start after more than twenty years of authoritarian and military rule.

Mauritania has had multiple coups and coup attempts since independence.

Leaders of the United Nations and African Union, as well as several heads of states have condemned the most recent coup and are calling for a peaceful return to constitutional rule. The European Commission has threatened to suspend aid to Mauritania, otherwise. The Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights is requesting sanctions against coup leaders, while the Dakar-based African Forum for the Defense of Human Rights has called for the immediate release of President Abdallahi and his collaborators.

Jason Mosley, senior analyst with the UK-based Oxford Analytica, says months of political instability have moved the country away from the socioeconomic platform that helped to elect Abdallahi. “It wasn’t really on the [political] agenda, or it didn’t have a chance to get anywhere before the politics overtook the social agenda. [Sidi Mohamed ould Cheikh] Abdallahi felt threatened by the food crisis and security issues.”

Mauritania has been rocked by alleged terrorist attacks, including the murder of four French tourists in December 2007, which has stoked criticism of Abdallahi’s handling of security issues.

Analyst Mosley says the relatively new ruling coalition, National Pact for Democracy and Development (PNDD), in place since last April, did not have time to coalesce before being hit with the social pressure of rising food costs.

Reflecting a global trend, food prices in arid Mauritania have doubled within the past year. In August 2007, thousands were displaced in Mauritania from flooding that wiped out crops and cattle. Months later, food riots broke out in southeast Mauritania.

Mauritanian graduate student Boubacar Datt, studying in neighbouring Dakar, Senegal, says some in Mauritania might feel relief in the wake of the coup, because they are eager for change. “What they don’t see is that Sidi [Mohamed ould Cheikh Abdallahi] was only a mascot and never had power. People talk about Mauritania being a democracy, but Mauritania has always been led by military. This [coup] comes as no surprise. Democracy does not exist. It is only on papers. In daily life, Sidi [Mohamed ould Cheikh Abdallahi] could not realise his campaign promises.”

Datt says that no matter who is in power, he does not think food will suddenly become more plentiful, fuel cheaper, or life any easier.

Abdallahi campaigned to end slavery, which persists despite being outlawed for more than 20 years, and to reintegrate refugees who fled brutal border and ethnic clashes in 1989. Hundreds died and tens of thousands escaped to neighbouring Mali and Senegal, many of whom still hesitate to return.

Moustapha Toure, with the Association of Mauritanian Refugees in Senegal, says he is worried the coup will stop the return of refugees from Senegal, which began earlier in 2008. “This will end the repatriation, and effectively put the brakes on the healing process,” he said.

Last October, Abdallahi’s government organised a national day of dialogue with exiled refugees to discuss how to carry out the repatriation. Toure attended the event in Nouakchott. “The president had committed to organising a peace and reconciliation commission, which has long been one of our key demands. It is hard to see that commission coming apart even before it has had a chance to be created.”

IRIN 

Mohammed Ould Abdel Latif, an editor of the “Al Houriya” an Arabic language newspaper was on July 21, 2008 arrested and detained by the Mauritanian police.
The journalist remains in detention.

Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)’s correspondent reported that although no reasons have been assigned for his arrest and subsequent detention, it might be due to an article he wrote that was published in Issue No. 98 of the “Al Houriya” on the same day of his arrest.

The correspondent said that in the article, Abdel Latif claimed that some judges had collected bribes in the sum of 25 million Ouguiya  to close a case involving some 43 suspected drug criminals.

This is the second in a month that a journalist from the “Al Houriya” has been arrested because of his work.

On June 12, Mohamed Nema Oumar, the paper’s  managing editor was also arrested and detained  on the orders of the Attorney General. This followed a libel complaint lodged by the Deputy Speaker of the Mauritanian Senate, Mohcen Ould El Hadj.

The complaint was filed following an article published by “Al Houriya” on the alleged participation of the Senator El Hadj in activities marking the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel.

The MFWA is dismayed at the ever increasing tendency of the Mauritanian authorities to arrest and detain journalists. We call for the immediate release of Ould Abel Latif. We also call on the authorities to repeal all laws which are inimical to press freedom. 

Media Foundation for West Africa 

Irregular migrants trying to reach Europe are being arrested, ill-treated and collectively expelled from Mauritania without opportunity to challenge the decision according to a new Amnesty International report.

Published on Tuesday 1 July the report, Mauritania: Nobody wants anything to do with us, arrests and collective expulsions of migrants denied entry into Europe, also says that sometimes migrants aren’t even sent back to their own home countries.

Since 2006, thousands of migrants accused of setting out from Mauritania with the intention of entering Europe via Spain’s Canary Islands, have been arrested.

Many of those people have been held in a detention centre at Nouadhibou in northern Mauritania. Some have been ill-treated by members of the Mauritanian security forces.

Nationals of West African countries say they have been arbitrarily arrested in the street or at home and accused, apparently without any evidence, of intending to travel to Spain.

According to the National Security Service, 3,257 people were held in the centre in 2007, all were then sent to Senegal and Mali, regardless of their nationality or country of origin. These people are left at the border, often without much food and with no means of transport.

Salvatore Saguès, Amnesty International’s West Africa Researcher, said that “This policy of arrests and collective expulsions by the Mauritanian authorities is the result of intense pressure exerted on Mauritania by the European Union (EU), and Spain in particular, as they seek to involve certain African countries in their attempt to combat irregular migration to Europe.”

Amnesty International calls on the Mauritanian authorities to ensure that their security forces are abiding by international law.

The organization also calls on the EU and its member states, most notably Spain, to take responsibility for ensuring that migrants are treated according to international human rights standards.

“EU states are using countries such as Mauritania to manage the flow of migrants who attempt to reach Europe from their territory. They have become the de facto ‘policemen of Europe’,” said Salvatore Saguès.

Amnesty International