It is one thing to hear about tragic and deadly
events, to hear it on the radio or even watch it on the evening news; we
feel sorry for a couple of minutes and that's it! On the other hand, it
can change our lives for ever like all the victims of April 1989 who did
nothing wrong but being at what we like to call "the wrong place at the
wrong moment." The following text is just a sum up of general historical
facts (that will help explain what happened), the event itself, and my
emotion as a person who lived the riots of 1989.
Historical explanation:
Africa had been (and still is) a shelter for
many ethnic groups spread throughout the continent. Each one of those groups
has developed through the ages an original culture matching an original
language often used, back to the early steps of civilizations, as a distinctive
criteria.
Thus, at a time when nature was still dominating
mankind, it often appeared that certain isolated individuals (migrating
or simply avoiding local rival chiefs) settled down and involuntarily or
for security reasons altered their original languages creating, in a long
process, different dialects that will later contribute to the birth of
a new group (not to say tribe).
In western Africa, specifically
the Senegal-Mauritania region, the populations found in place were quite
interesting: the north was naturally sheltering nomadic Arab groups(Sanhaja
berbers) around oasses while black Africans were settled on the green lands
of the Senegal river valley. The few interactions between these two ethnic
groups were mainly for commercial exchanges.
However, with the apparition
of french colonial powers in the nineteen hundreds, the Moors and the black
came to an encounter and are later forced to leave together: the drought
of the 60-70's obliged the Moor populations to move south closer to the
Blacks. At this point, problems became frequent between the communities
thought they always were minor, except the protest of the black community
in the early 60's when the Mauritanian government begun a long process
of "arabization" of the educational system created previously by the French
(before the French colonization education was based on Qur'anic instruction).
Personally, I remember when the government
introduced in the syllabus an obligatory class in Arabic that counted importantly
in the "coefficient", a system of grade. The majority of the blacks tended
to study French unlike the Moors who had a natural tendance for Arabic.
The events:
On April 1989, an incident broke between Senegalese
and Mauritanians at the natural border of the Senegal river, killing two
Senegalese.
When the news spread in Dakar, Senegal, "revenge"
was taken on the Mauritanians living in Senegal. It is very important to
note that just months before the events the Senegalese president Abdou
Diouf won the presidential vote. His principal opponent, Abdoulaye Wade,
was seen by the youth as the man who would bring some "change" (Wolof phrase
is: "Soopi") in their unemployed lives. Therefore, the renewal of the reign
was claimed fraudulent and angrily shown : destruction of public property
and government agencies...
With this situation still pending, the incident
between the two countries became an excuse to release their anger and as
a result, all black living in Mauritania were subject to attacks, expulsion
(that went way after the event) and killings.
My testimony:
When the attacks over Senegalese begun in
Nouakchott, Mauritania, I was on my way home from school (College Ksar)
after a class I recall to be French literature. I am not going to insist
on the details for I am writing an autobiography entitled: "Fiery Banks
or the itinerary of an adolescent". However, I was lucky that day to be
dressed exactly like a black Moor, speak the local language (Hasssanya,
very similar to arabic), and went straight home. That same day, some of
my neighbors were attacked but no one was injured. Things degenerated very
quickly the following days; the attacks becoming more violent before reaching
a fatal point: while all our neighbors had escaped or were killed, my family,
thanks to its friendly and peaceful habits with everyone, was temporarily
safe. I remember once leaving my house, led by my curiosity , to see what
was going on, (to our front door) running into a group of "Haratines" (black
Moors that did all the attacks) two of them were carrying a book shelf
and a table took from pillaged houses and making bad jokes about those
they just ruined the lives. I remember laughing with them (they would have
suspected something if I didn't and my family would have been probably
massacred).
Of course, at a certain point it became too
dangerous. My mom sent my 3 sisters and a cousin to Senegal (2 of them,
just like me were born in Mauritania)
which was a wise decision since a couple
of days later, my mom was arrested without any reason (while I was at school
and deprived of my immediate family). At that point, I became homeless
and had to spend 5 days with not less than 800 refugees (the number grew before I left)in downtown Nouakchott,
in a Red crescent camp (in islamic countries Red crescent=Red cross) before
been evacuated to Dakar. I was 13 years old...
Other link:
This more
specific link
will give you an idea of what is happening now to the refugees'
camps along the Senegal river valley.
NOTE: Hundreds of Mauritanians who
lived for generations in Mauritania are today deprived of their ancestral
lands and legal rights.
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