Secret slaves of Mauritania: Mother and daughter were beaten and raped (and only escaped after their children were murdered)



They perch awkwardly on an imitation rococo sofa in a nondescript room in the desert wastes of Mauritania.

And though the setting is incongruous, it is not as out of place as the horrific tale that Moulkheir Mint Yarba and her daughter Selek’ha have to tell.

Their story - of casual brutality, rape, slavery and the murder of their children - is one that does not belong to the 21st century.

But perhaps the most shocking part of their experience, told in a new CNN investigation Slavery’s Last Stronghold – is that it is not uncommon.

Free: Moulkheir Mint Yarba (left) and her daughter Selek'ha were both raped and abused by their masters but escaped with the help of a charity in Mauritania

In 1981, Mauritania became the last country in the world to abolish slavery. Owning another person did not become illegal until 2007 and there has only been one successful prosecution.

The United Nations estimates that between 10 and 20 per cent of the 3.4million population are enslaved.

Moulkheir, who is in her 40s, was born a slave and spent her childhood tending her master’s herds. When she reached puberty, her owner took her out into the fields and raped her for the first time.

In the next few years, she was to bear him five children – all of whom were also born into slavery.

Staggeringly, the tradition is so ingrained in the Mauritanian psyche that Moulkheir did not even question the way she was treated.

Face of freedom: Moulkheir's five children were also all born slaves

‘I was like an animal living with animals,’ she told CNN’s John D. Sutter when he visited the country in December as part of the network’s ongoing Freedom Project, which was set up to fight modern day slavery.

The cataclysmic event which was to shatter her existence forever took place on an ordinary afternoon when she returned home from tending the goats.

Lying dead in the dust outside the hut was her youngest child, a little girl who had only just started to crawl.

Moulkheir’s master – and the child’s father – had dumped the baby outside to die.

He told her she would work faster without the girl tied to her back.

Moulkheir asked to bury the baby. The man refused.

‘(He told me) her soul was a dog’s soul,’ she said.

She was only able to lay her child to rest at the end of the day, in a shallow grave with no burial rites.

‘I only had my tears to console me,’ she told the anti-slavery activists who eventually helped free her.

‘I cried a lot for my daughter and the situation I was in. Instead of understanding, they ordered me to shut up.’

Medieval society: These slaves live in a village separate from their masters. They are not allowed to leave and must tend the land

Desolate: The tumbledown huts scattered across the desert provide the most basic of accommodation

Moulkheir tried to carry on with her life. After owning another person was criminalised in 2007, an action group intervened and she briefly found herself free.

But her joy was short-lived. She and her children had gone to work for a former Mauritanian army colonel. There was no job. Instead the family was enslaved once more.



‘He turned out to be worse,’ Moulkheir said. ‘He beat me and slept with my daughters. He would fire above their heads with a gun.’

Selek’ha was beaten from the age of 13 and soon the colonel began raping her. She fell pregnant when she was 15 or 16.

The teenager was petrified that her master would be furious and feared for herself and her baby.

Her terror was well-founded. At nine months pregnant, the colonel put her in a pickup truck and drove furiously at high speeds along a rough dirt track.

'They put me in a car and drove it hard,' she said. 'And the baby came out of me dead.'



This terrible event was the turning point for Moulkheir and her family.

With the help of SOS Slaves, an action group established by a former master and a slave, they all finally escaped.

Moulkheir and Selek’ha now live in a very basic one-room shack in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott and attend a nearby school set up by SOS.

But they are both still desperate for justice and are attempting to take their two former owners to court.

‘I demand justice – justice for my daughter that they killed, and justice for all the time they spent beating and abusing me,’ Moulkher told CNN.

Poverty: Many Mauritanians struggle to survive with many surviving on less than $2 a day

Desert land: The vast country covers 400,000 square miles and sits in the Sahara Desert

‘I want justice for all the work I did for them. I hold them all responsible. I am not afraid of anyone.’

The school teaches freed slaves the essential life skills which will help them to survive and develop their own livelihood.



Selek’ha, now 18, said the lessons had transformed her life.

‘I want to know how to sew, and then I want to get my own sewing machine,’ she explained. ‘Eventually, I want to open a shop.’

SOS was set up by Boubacar Messaoud, who is himself a freed slave, and Abdel Nasser Ould Ethmane, the former slave owner.

Both told the CNN team that freeing Mauritania’s thousands of slaves was infinitely more complex than cutting off a pair of shackles

‘Chains are for the slave who has just become a slave, who has… just been brought across the Atlantic,’ Boubacar said.

‘But the multigenerational slave, the slave descending from many generations, he is a slave even in his own head.

‘And he is totally submissive. He is ready to sacrifice himself, even for his master.

‘Unfortunately, it’s this type of slavery that we have today, (the slavery) American plantation owners dreamed of.’

Slavery’s Last Stronghold: A CNN Freedom Project Special Report, airs on Thursday March 29 at 8.30am.The half-hour programme will be repeated on Friday March 30 at 5.30am and Saturday March 31 at 7.30am and 4pm. The CNN team has also put together a digital magazine to tell the story, which can be found by clicking on the link above

