CAMPBELL: In a mud brick village in the desert of Niger a mother nurses her newborn baby. Halima’s child is sick and malnourished but she lives in hope of giving her a better life than her own. Until she escaped six months ago, Halima was a slave. Her baby daughter, like her other three children, was born of rape by her master.
00:25
HALIMA: There were too many humiliations. Even in broad daylight, while I was cooking or washing clothes, my master would call me to have sex with him. We did it in the kitchen. I didn’t even have the right to go into his room. I was always wearing tattered clothes which reflect my status as a slave.
01:31
CAMPBELL: Niger is one of the world’s most arid and poorest nations. A land-locked desert country north of Nigeria, it is home to 11 million people, most of them nomads or farmers scratching a living from the parched soil.
Hereditary slavery has long been an intrinsic part of its culture. The French colonial rulers tolerated the practice. The post-colonial dictators ignored it. It was only international pressure that finally persuaded the parliament to outlaw it in May 2003.
02:00
But the abolition has not meant the end of slavery. Rather, it’s given the government a premise to argue the problem no longer exists. Over the past nine days we’ve travelled to some of the most remote parts of this country. And what we’ve found is that slavery is out of sight but still very real.
02:27
And a murky fight between those trying to free slaves and those trying to ignore may actually extinguished their best chance for freedom.
02:44
Niamey Our journey began in the capital, Niamey, the headquarters of the anti-slaving group Timidria, meaning “brotherhood”.
02:59
Timidria’s leader, Weila Ilguilas, has long embarrassed the government with startling claims of continued slavery.
03:08
WEILA: We found that more than 870,000 people were affected by this phenomenon today.
03:17
Weila Politically nothing is done to eradicate this slavery phenomenon. On the contrary, there is a tendency to deny it.
03:26
CAMPBELL: The reason for the silence, he argues is this. Niamey is preparing to host the Francophone Games, a mini-Olympics for French-speaking countries, to be held in December.
03:38
WEILA: Many of the countries who are to participate in the Francophone Games, who are true democrats, who are really democratic republics, would not accept to come to a country where today slavery is still in existence.
04:04
CAMPBELL: To find out the truth for ourselves, we set off north across the desert to the district of Tahoua, widely seen as a heartland of slavery.
04:23
Tahoua It’s a vast region of mud-brick villages and nomadic camps on the edge of the Sahara.
04:31
The central government has long relied on the support of traditional chiefs here to enforce its edicts -- chiefs who have traditionally owned slaves.
04:47
CAMPBELL: Prince Moustapha Kadi is the son of a powerful chief and a former slave owner. He is also a human rights activist.
05:10
PRINCE MOUSTAPHA: We decided to release our slaves because we consider that the time has come. We actually inherited our slaves at a time when there was no official abolition in Niger.
05:21
CAMPBELL: In December 2003 – seven months after slavery was outlawed – he publicly freed the family’s slaves -- five adults and two children who had been born into lifetime bondage.
05:40
PRINCE MOUSTAPHA: So today it is very clear that each Nigerien (NB THIS IS THE CORRECT SPELLING) must stand up and recognise that slavery has to end.
06:00
CAMPBELL: But having just outlawed slavery, the government denies that the practice continues.
06:11
The Tahoua governor, Zity Maiga, who attended the liberation, now claims it was a stunt to discredit Niger.
06:18
ZITY: These people told us afterwards when we investigated that they had been forced into coming to the meeting.
06:28
They collected this information in order to tell those who accompanied them that these were slaves in such and such a place. But this is totally false.
06:39
CAMPBELL: We found one of the men who took part in the ceremony still living in the village. Abdou confirmed he had been raised as a slave. While the others left to build new lives, Abdou has chosen to remain here, continuing to groom the horses of the prince’s father.
ABDOU: I don’t get money, but only food. God knows I am free, but I really feel I should work for him because my mother is away and I feel that I should stay here.
07:25
CAMPBELL: Slavery in Niger has long been like a caste system, where dark skinned members of certain tribes worked in unpaid servitude for lighter-skinned masters. It was not so much a trade as a brutal social hierarchy.
07:46
WEILA: You will not find a slave market in Niger, nor will you find a shackled slave and even less a slave transaction. On the other hand, what the type of slavery we experience shares with the former slave trade is humiliation, stigmas, the labels of persons who are considered sub-human.
08:04
CAMPBELL: The difficulty is proving how much of it still goes on. These days, nobody will admit to owning slaves. The law carries a penalty of up to 30 years in gaol. But how many continue to have slaves secretly, and how many continue to live in bondage by a different name?
08:37
We travelled further north to find some answers, guided by a Timidria activist, Algamisse Amalouz.There are not even roads here between most of the villages. It is barren, unsentimental country where people do whatever they can to survive.
08:58
CAMPBELL: Most of the people here are slaves.
ALGAMISSE: Yes, here most of these people are slaves in the village.
09:18
The drought problem affects everyone, slaves and masters. When one talks of the pleasure of farming, it rests on the animals. If the animals are lean, then so is the owner, who is very sad.
09:22
CAMPBELL: It didn’t take us long to find people who identified themselves as slaves. The people here told us they all worked for masters in a nearby village. They were dark-skinned Tuaregs, the main ethnic group in Tahoua.
09:40
This woman, Hilethay, said she had been born a slave, as had her two-year-old daughter Zaynaboo.
09:56
HILETHAY: When I grew up, I found my parents in bondage. She will do what I have been doing since I can’t prevent her from being a slave. Somebody who works like this cannot claim to be equal to his master. A slave is only breathing, but he is a sick living person.
10:02
CAMPBELL: All of them had heard of the law abolishing slavery. But with no money and no family outside the village, they saw no way to escape.
10:34
HILETHAY: Because I don’t know where to go and if I dare go to Tchintabaraden I may lose my way. I could be tortured. So I pound grains and I fetch water.
10:45
CAMPBELL: But some have found the courage to flee.
11:05
Wanagada told us she and her five children escaped from their master last year, after a lifetime of rape and beatings. Her family now ekes a living from this wind-blown settlement helped by Timidria.
11:11
ASSIBIT: The worst thing was doing work I did not choose to do. I did whatever the master wanted me to do without rest.
11:30
Assibit I am better now, thank God. I realise I am my own mistress.
11:44
CAMPBELL: But not everyone Timidria took us to see agreed they lived in servitude. At a nearby watering hole, we saw dozens of people doing traditional slave tasks -- tending animals and fetching wood and water. Amalouz insisted the people here had told him they were slaves. But when we turned our camera on, they denied it.
11:59
AMALOUZ: She says that the water is for her.
12:23
That’s what she says, but before she said it was for her master. Now she says it is for her. So she did not say the same thing.
12:25
CAMPBELL: He tried again, and got a different answer.
AMALOUZ: Tell me your tribe or race.
WOMAN: And you, what is your ethnic group.
AMALOUZ: I am a slave.
WOMAN: Therefore, we too are slaves.
CAMPBELL: Later, they denied it again, saying they had never been enslaved.
12:40
It was impossible to know if Timidria was exaggerating their plight or if they were simply scared to speak freely.
13:00
The sons of a reputed slave master stood near us listening to their answers.
13:07
CAMPBELL: It’s difficult for Timidria to know how many slaves there really are here.
AMALOUZ: Yes, it’s difficult because there are slaves who won’t admit to it, but just the same when you ask them they will say “Yes, I am from the slave race but now I work for myself.” But that’s not true --many do not work for themselves, many work for a master. That’s the problem.
13:12
CAMPBELL: That problem has made it impossible for Timidria to prove its claim of 870,000 slaves. The London-based movement Anti-Slavery International puts a far more conservative figure, estimating that there are least 43,000 slaves. The central government’s representative here, Zity Maiga, says there are none.
13:52
ZITY: So I can tell you that to my knowledge as the Governor of the Tahoua region, which I have been leading for almost six years, I have never been made aware that slavery exists in the region.
14:24
CAMPBELL: But we have met many people in your region who told us they were slaves?
ZITY: If those people told you that, have not those people been psychologically prepared? As you know Timidria is active -- it sensitises people to get some financing, maybe external financing.
14:44
CAMPBELL: The government has long accused Timidria of inventing claims of slavery to get money from international donors.
15:13
In March, it stopped Timidria holding a ceremony to release 7,000 slaves, claiming this letter from a traditional chief offering to free them was a forgery.
15:20
WEILA: I refute all these allegations. I have never received a single franc from anybody to organise such a ceremony.
15:31
CAMPBELL: At first glance, Niger appears to guarantee basic freedoms. Since military rule ended in the 1999, the government has allowed opposition parties, civil rights groups and free trade unions. All can march on International Labour Day to call for workers’ rights.
15:44
But it’s democracy with strict limits. Shortly before our visit, Prince Moustapha spent ten days in prison for leading a protest against rising food prices. Two days before this rally, the authorities struck again, arresting Weila Ilguilas over his stated plan to release 7,000 slaves.
16:11
PRINCE MOUSTAPHA: Weila was arrested simply because the Timidria association is a hindrance. It seriously hurts the government, therefore the government cannot let it continue on with its work. Yet the work it’s trying to do is a responsible one, a democratic one.
16:36
CAMPBELL: Weila was released from prison six weeks later after a court found there were no grounds to hold him. Even so, his detention and the criminal charges he still faces have severely stymied Timidria’s activities. Suggestions of fraud have given the government a means to discredit all Timidria’s claims.
17:00
But what we saw during our journey left us convinced that thousands continue to live as human baggage; working for masters for nothing more than food, their children destined to grow up in servitude.
17:24
PRINCE MOUSTAPHA: Slavery thrives.
17:41
But it is an attitude about which only the government holds the secret. We Nigeriens cannot understand why the government still resists an issue that is concrete and real. Slaves are here, present, they live with us.
17:44
For me in Niger, there should be no slaves. One slave is too many.
18:02
CAMPBELL: As the Francophone Games approach, Niger’s government is stepping up its denials -- recently challenging outsiders to find a single slave market.
It is a subtle but perhaps effective way to conceal its dark secret. The chains and markets may be gone, but in 21st century Africa, human beings are still being born as slaves.
18:44
Credits:
Reporter: Eric Campbell
Camera: Ron Foley
Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen
Producer: Mary Ann Jolley
00:25
HALIMA: There were too many humiliations. Even in broad daylight, while I was cooking or washing clothes, my master would call me to have sex with him. We did it in the kitchen. I didn’t even have the right to go into his room. I was always wearing tattered clothes which reflect my status as a slave.
01:31
CAMPBELL: Niger is one of the world’s most arid and poorest nations. A land-locked desert country north of Nigeria, it is home to 11 million people, most of them nomads or farmers scratching a living from the parched soil.
Hereditary slavery has long been an intrinsic part of its culture. The French colonial rulers tolerated the practice. The post-colonial dictators ignored it. It was only international pressure that finally persuaded the parliament to outlaw it in May 2003.
02:00
But the abolition has not meant the end of slavery. Rather, it’s given the government a premise to argue the problem no longer exists. Over the past nine days we’ve travelled to some of the most remote parts of this country. And what we’ve found is that slavery is out of sight but still very real.
02:27
And a murky fight between those trying to free slaves and those trying to ignore may actually extinguished their best chance for freedom.
02:44
Niamey Our journey began in the capital, Niamey, the headquarters of the anti-slaving group Timidria, meaning “brotherhood”.
02:59
Timidria’s leader, Weila Ilguilas, has long embarrassed the government with startling claims of continued slavery.
03:08
WEILA: We found that more than 870,000 people were affected by this phenomenon today.
03:17
Weila Politically nothing is done to eradicate this slavery phenomenon. On the contrary, there is a tendency to deny it.
03:26
CAMPBELL: The reason for the silence, he argues is this. Niamey is preparing to host the Francophone Games, a mini-Olympics for French-speaking countries, to be held in December.
03:38
WEILA: Many of the countries who are to participate in the Francophone Games, who are true democrats, who are really democratic republics, would not accept to come to a country where today slavery is still in existence.
04:04
CAMPBELL: To find out the truth for ourselves, we set off north across the desert to the district of Tahoua, widely seen as a heartland of slavery.
04:23
Tahoua It’s a vast region of mud-brick villages and nomadic camps on the edge of the Sahara.
04:31
The central government has long relied on the support of traditional chiefs here to enforce its edicts -- chiefs who have traditionally owned slaves.
04:47
CAMPBELL: Prince Moustapha Kadi is the son of a powerful chief and a former slave owner. He is also a human rights activist.
05:10
PRINCE MOUSTAPHA: We decided to release our slaves because we consider that the time has come. We actually inherited our slaves at a time when there was no official abolition in Niger.
05:21
CAMPBELL: In December 2003 – seven months after slavery was outlawed – he publicly freed the family’s slaves -- five adults and two children who had been born into lifetime bondage.
05:40
PRINCE MOUSTAPHA: So today it is very clear that each Nigerien (NB THIS IS THE CORRECT SPELLING) must stand up and recognise that slavery has to end.
06:00
CAMPBELL: But having just outlawed slavery, the government denies that the practice continues.
06:11
The Tahoua governor, Zity Maiga, who attended the liberation, now claims it was a stunt to discredit Niger.
06:18
ZITY: These people told us afterwards when we investigated that they had been forced into coming to the meeting.
06:28
They collected this information in order to tell those who accompanied them that these were slaves in such and such a place. But this is totally false.
06:39
CAMPBELL: We found one of the men who took part in the ceremony still living in the village. Abdou confirmed he had been raised as a slave. While the others left to build new lives, Abdou has chosen to remain here, continuing to groom the horses of the prince’s father.
ABDOU: I don’t get money, but only food. God knows I am free, but I really feel I should work for him because my mother is away and I feel that I should stay here.
07:25
CAMPBELL: Slavery in Niger has long been like a caste system, where dark skinned members of certain tribes worked in unpaid servitude for lighter-skinned masters. It was not so much a trade as a brutal social hierarchy.
07:46
WEILA: You will not find a slave market in Niger, nor will you find a shackled slave and even less a slave transaction. On the other hand, what the type of slavery we experience shares with the former slave trade is humiliation, stigmas, the labels of persons who are considered sub-human.
08:04
CAMPBELL: The difficulty is proving how much of it still goes on. These days, nobody will admit to owning slaves. The law carries a penalty of up to 30 years in gaol. But how many continue to have slaves secretly, and how many continue to live in bondage by a different name?
08:37
We travelled further north to find some answers, guided by a Timidria activist, Algamisse Amalouz.There are not even roads here between most of the villages. It is barren, unsentimental country where people do whatever they can to survive.
08:58
CAMPBELL: Most of the people here are slaves.
ALGAMISSE: Yes, here most of these people are slaves in the village.
09:18
The drought problem affects everyone, slaves and masters. When one talks of the pleasure of farming, it rests on the animals. If the animals are lean, then so is the owner, who is very sad.
09:22
CAMPBELL: It didn’t take us long to find people who identified themselves as slaves. The people here told us they all worked for masters in a nearby village. They were dark-skinned Tuaregs, the main ethnic group in Tahoua.
09:40
This woman, Hilethay, said she had been born a slave, as had her two-year-old daughter Zaynaboo.
09:56
HILETHAY: When I grew up, I found my parents in bondage. She will do what I have been doing since I can’t prevent her from being a slave. Somebody who works like this cannot claim to be equal to his master. A slave is only breathing, but he is a sick living person.
10:02
CAMPBELL: All of them had heard of the law abolishing slavery. But with no money and no family outside the village, they saw no way to escape.
10:34
HILETHAY: Because I don’t know where to go and if I dare go to Tchintabaraden I may lose my way. I could be tortured. So I pound grains and I fetch water.
10:45
CAMPBELL: But some have found the courage to flee.
11:05
Wanagada told us she and her five children escaped from their master last year, after a lifetime of rape and beatings. Her family now ekes a living from this wind-blown settlement helped by Timidria.
11:11
ASSIBIT: The worst thing was doing work I did not choose to do. I did whatever the master wanted me to do without rest.
11:30
Assibit I am better now, thank God. I realise I am my own mistress.
11:44
CAMPBELL: But not everyone Timidria took us to see agreed they lived in servitude. At a nearby watering hole, we saw dozens of people doing traditional slave tasks -- tending animals and fetching wood and water. Amalouz insisted the people here had told him they were slaves. But when we turned our camera on, they denied it.
11:59
AMALOUZ: She says that the water is for her.
12:23
That’s what she says, but before she said it was for her master. Now she says it is for her. So she did not say the same thing.
12:25
CAMPBELL: He tried again, and got a different answer.
AMALOUZ: Tell me your tribe or race.
WOMAN: And you, what is your ethnic group.
AMALOUZ: I am a slave.
WOMAN: Therefore, we too are slaves.
CAMPBELL: Later, they denied it again, saying they had never been enslaved.
12:40
It was impossible to know if Timidria was exaggerating their plight or if they were simply scared to speak freely.
13:00
The sons of a reputed slave master stood near us listening to their answers.
13:07
CAMPBELL: It’s difficult for Timidria to know how many slaves there really are here.
AMALOUZ: Yes, it’s difficult because there are slaves who won’t admit to it, but just the same when you ask them they will say “Yes, I am from the slave race but now I work for myself.” But that’s not true --many do not work for themselves, many work for a master. That’s the problem.
13:12
CAMPBELL: That problem has made it impossible for Timidria to prove its claim of 870,000 slaves. The London-based movement Anti-Slavery International puts a far more conservative figure, estimating that there are least 43,000 slaves. The central government’s representative here, Zity Maiga, says there are none.
13:52
ZITY: So I can tell you that to my knowledge as the Governor of the Tahoua region, which I have been leading for almost six years, I have never been made aware that slavery exists in the region.
14:24
CAMPBELL: But we have met many people in your region who told us they were slaves?
ZITY: If those people told you that, have not those people been psychologically prepared? As you know Timidria is active -- it sensitises people to get some financing, maybe external financing.
14:44
CAMPBELL: The government has long accused Timidria of inventing claims of slavery to get money from international donors.
15:13
In March, it stopped Timidria holding a ceremony to release 7,000 slaves, claiming this letter from a traditional chief offering to free them was a forgery.
15:20
WEILA: I refute all these allegations. I have never received a single franc from anybody to organise such a ceremony.
15:31
CAMPBELL: At first glance, Niger appears to guarantee basic freedoms. Since military rule ended in the 1999, the government has allowed opposition parties, civil rights groups and free trade unions. All can march on International Labour Day to call for workers’ rights.
15:44
But it’s democracy with strict limits. Shortly before our visit, Prince Moustapha spent ten days in prison for leading a protest against rising food prices. Two days before this rally, the authorities struck again, arresting Weila Ilguilas over his stated plan to release 7,000 slaves.
16:11
PRINCE MOUSTAPHA: Weila was arrested simply because the Timidria association is a hindrance. It seriously hurts the government, therefore the government cannot let it continue on with its work. Yet the work it’s trying to do is a responsible one, a democratic one.
16:36
CAMPBELL: Weila was released from prison six weeks later after a court found there were no grounds to hold him. Even so, his detention and the criminal charges he still faces have severely stymied Timidria’s activities. Suggestions of fraud have given the government a means to discredit all Timidria’s claims.
17:00
But what we saw during our journey left us convinced that thousands continue to live as human baggage; working for masters for nothing more than food, their children destined to grow up in servitude.
17:24
PRINCE MOUSTAPHA: Slavery thrives.
17:41
But it is an attitude about which only the government holds the secret. We Nigeriens cannot understand why the government still resists an issue that is concrete and real. Slaves are here, present, they live with us.
17:44
For me in Niger, there should be no slaves. One slave is too many.
18:02
CAMPBELL: As the Francophone Games approach, Niger’s government is stepping up its denials -- recently challenging outsiders to find a single slave market.
It is a subtle but perhaps effective way to conceal its dark secret. The chains and markets may be gone, but in 21st century Africa, human beings are still being born as slaves.
18:44
Credits:
Reporter: Eric Campbell
Camera: Ron Foley
Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen
Producer: Mary Ann Jolley