Mauritania's Campaign of Terror

Since 1989, tens of thousands of black Mauritanians have been forcibly expelled and hundreds more have been tortured or killed. An undeclared military occupation of the Senegal River Valley — where many of the blacks live — subjects those who remain to harsh repression. The campaign to eliminate black culture in Mauritania, orchestrated by the white Moor rulers, peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s and continues today. Mauritania's Campaign of Terror documents the range of human rights abuses that the black Africans have suffered in Mauritania. It shows that the most egregious violations — such as massacres, torture, and slavery — have been accompanied by more insidious forms of de facto discrimination against the black Africans, aimed at ensuring their marginalization from the rest of society and depriving them of their fundamental human rights.