Affidavit of Amiddine Sy

I, the undersigned, Amiddine Sy, hereby attest to the following:

1. I was born on 10 May 1940 at Dakar-Yoff. My father was from Mauritania, born in Thialgou, in the region of Aleg, the 5th region of Mauritania. When I was seven years old, I was sent to Mauritania to study the Koran in the town of Boghé, in the region of Aleg. I did part of my primary school in Senegal, then returned to Boghé. I am Peul and speak Pulaar.

2. In 1962, when I finished my studies and started work, I was posted as a primary school teacher in Moudjeria. I was employed by the Mauritanian state. I was posted in Dolol, in Kundel Reo, and in Kaedi. I had family on both sides of the Senegal/Mauritania border, but the majority were in Mauritania. In late 1966 I was posted in Selibabi, where I taught school for over twenty years.

3. Selibabi is the capital of the 10th region of Mauritania, Guidimaka. There were Moors, Fula, Soninkés, and Bambaras living in Selibabi. The most numerous were the Soninké. They were the natives of the region. It’s not far from Mali. I lived there with my wife and ten children.

4. I had all my nationality papers showing that I was Mauritanian. I had a national identity card, and each member of my family received a certificate of nationality when they were born. I never had trouble getting papers for myself or my children.

5. Discrimination in Mauritania showed itself in the politics of language. In 1979, the Ministry of Education sent around ‘Circular 009’ that increased the number of hours of Arabic taught in the schools. They started discriminating on the basis of language among the teachers. Blacks could become directors or schools, but if they didn’t speak al-Hansaniya, the Mauritanian dialect of Arabic, they wouldn’t have the same power as a Moor who was a teacher under their supervision. If you were black, they would assume you didn’t share their ideas; they didn’t have confidence in you. I’d been a French teacher since 1962, and I kept collecting my salary, but I understood that the situation was changing. They used to send the circulars from the Ministry of Education in Nouakchott in French, but from about 1979 they sent them only in Arabic. After this circular, education in Arabic became obligatory--the first two years of primary school were only in Arabic. In the third year French was taught, but only one hour a day.

6. Another sign of discrimination was that, at the level of government, all the posts were held by Moors—the government, the prefect, commissioner of police, commander of gendarmerie, directeur de sureté, the magistrates. This annoyed black civil servants, because they knew they could not advance higher than a certain level. There were also several political movements to which civil servants belonged—the Muslim Brotherhood, the Baathists—who wanted Mauritania to

1 become an Arab country. We heard about this on the radio, but we didn’t really have telephones, and Nouakchott was far away. There were demonstrations in favour of Mauritania joining the Arab League. There were also counter- demonstrations of blacks who thought they were being marginalized.

7. There were Senegalese in the region of Diawara who had fields in Mauritania, and there were also Mauritanians who had fields in Senegal. During the dry season, the river can be so dry that people can walk over. Even when there is water, you can cross in a pirogue, in five or ten minutes. The farmers along both sides of the river were mixed, Haratines, Soninké, and Peul. Lots of people spoke all three languages.

8. In our region, the real problems started with the National Guard of Mauritania, who always had permanent posts along the border. The Guard was 80% Moors Arabs or Haratines, blacks who spoke al-Hasaniya. In April 1989, some National Guardsmen killed some Senegalese Soninké at Diawara, 40 km away from Selibabi. They must have been killed in their fields in Mauritania. They brought a body up to Selibabi, perhaps to investigate. The Senegalese requested that all bodies be brought back to Senegal, and then there were demonstrations in Dakar against what was happening. There had been a similar incident a few years before, but it was smoothed over.

9. I think they wanted farmers off the land because some Moors with camels and other animals had let their animals graze in Senegal, and the Senegalese farmers had killed the animals. This started bad feeling. Perhaps there was also propaganda from some Iraqis who came to Mauritania and said to the Moors, “Mauritania is a country for Moors, but the blacks are more numerous than you— you should do something about this.” We don’t know for sure.

10. But in the same month as those killings, April, a process of repatriation began. First they repatriated all the Senegalese working in Selibabi—were masons, bakers, drivers, traders. There were announcements on the radio that the two governments, Senegal and Mauritania, had reached an agreement to repatriate all their citizens. They held a meeting at the police station, where they told all the Senegalese that they had to leave. They were allowed to take all their sheep and goods with them; the state provided trucks and took them to the border.

11. At the very end of April the police went around to the houses and workplaces of the Peul and said that we should bring our identity cards and certificates of nationality immediately to the police station to prove that we were Mauritanian. One week later, on the day of Korité, the police went around to people’s houses and asked everyone to come, with their families. Some people tried to bring goods with them, but the police stopped them.

12. Everyone gathered at the police station, all the Peul with all their families. I went in the morning, around 8am—before morning prayers—and I waited with my

2 family in the courtyard of the police station. When we arrived we saw that there were Peul already there, some in the cells, but we were in the courtyard. We waited the whole morning. Some people families arrived after we did. We knew they were going to take us somewhere, but we didn’t know where. There were police officers guarding the entrance, so no one could leave. No one gave us any explanation for why we were there.

13. Around 5pm they loaded us into trucks. There were seven families in the truck with us; each family probably had about 15 people. There were at least four covered trucks. The trucks were covered with tarps, so that the people in the town couldn’t see that there were people inside. There were still people in the cells when we left; perhaps they were deported afterwards.

14. By 8pm, we had reached the border at Gouraye/Bakel. They let us out of the trucks and there were lots of people already there, practically a camp. We stayed there overnight.

15. The next morning, there were Senegalese soldiers who crossed the river in the ferry to bring us across. There were Mauritian police and border guards; some police had some with us from Selibabi. They asked us for our names and professions and wrote them down before we boarded the ferry. There were also customs officials there who searched us. They took whatever we had—watches, for example. There might have been others authorities there, like the prefect or governor, but we didn’t see them.

16. When we arrived in Senegal, they told us just to wait. In the evening, a Senegalese colonel came to ask us what had happened. Each head of family explained what had happened. We were there for three days—the local population brought us food, since we didn’t have money. Then the government sent trucks to bring us to Tambacounda, then to the military camp at Ouakam, at Dakar. They didn’t explain anything to us. They knew we were Mauritanians. We stayed about a month.

17. At Ouakam, we saw lots of Senegalese Moors who had been brought there to be expelled. The government wanted to send them to Mauritania, but the chefs de quartiers from their neighborhoods in Dakar, who were not necessarily all Moors, came to retrieve them. Lots of the Moors had been born in Senegal and didn’t know Mauritania. The chef de quartiers explained that they were really Senegalese, even if they were Moors and they all went back to their houses soon.

18. Then, we went to Thiès, and stayed in grain storage hangars. We were there for about six months. It was there that we all got cards showing that we were Mauritanian refugees in Senegal. Finally, the trucks brought us to Dagana. When we came, there was nothing here but trees. We tried to construct houses out of straw. A delegation of the OAU came, Salim Ahmed Salim, and Boutros Boutros Ghali came. The UNHCR came and gave us oil and millet for a few years.

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19. I’m still Mauritanian. I’ve never tried to become Senegalese. Every year we have to send our refugee cards to Dakar to have them renewed. But other than the cards, we don’t get any benefits from the government.

20. Even the children born here are considered refugees. I can’t vote, I can’t work. People here in the camp try to cultivate land, to grow rice at the river to survive. If the UNHCR or someone else pays for us to rent the land, we can farm. I can travel around Senegal with my refugee card.

21. We can’t go back to Mauritania without getting back our rights: we wanted our nationality and all our rights back, my right to citizenship. I have no idea what happened to all my goods—I’m sure someone took them.

22. I still have family in Mauritania. They didn’t expel all the villages; in some villages, they left people. In other places they expelled everyone. They seemed to target the Peul. In the mixed villages, they left the Soninké behind. They also expelled Wolofs in the Rosso region. Perhaps they were targeting us because the Peul were more active in resisting Arabization.

23. When my children grow up, they may be able to get other nationalities, if they can get to France or America. But for now, they have refused all other nationalities; they want to stay Mauritanian. And even if we got Senegalese nationality, it wouldn’t be secure. It’s the same thing as Cote d’Ivoire. In ten years, the same problem could come again, and they could expel us to Mauritania saying that we aren’t real Senegalese. We don’t want nationality in a country that’s not in a state of law. Even if we went back to Mauritania, we wouldn’t have the right to real political participation. They would say we aren’t real Mauritanians. It would be the same in Mali. We need nationality in a country that respects it.

Amaddine Sy, 22 July 2004

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