The government of Niger has cancelled at the last minute a special ceremony during which at least 7,000 slaves were to be granted their freedom.
A spokesman for the government's human rights commission, which had helped to organise the event, said this was because slavery did not exist.
It is not clear why the government, which was also a co-sponsor of the ceremony, changed its position.
At least 43,000 people across Niger are thought to be in slavery.
Representatives of the slaves, the government and human rights campaigners had been due to attend the event at In Ates, near the border with Mali.
A local chief had agreed to the release after the introduction of a new law, which punishes those found guilty of slavery with up to 30 years in jail.
Read the whole thing here.
Well that last sentence clears everything up. If there is a jail term attached to slavery and the slave masters are important figures in Niger, then simply declaring that there is no slavery obviates the need to punish slave owners.
The persistence of extensive slavery and an active slave trade in Africa is an embarrassment both to the states involved and to those scholars who, for the past half century, have made the existence of slavery and subsequent race relations the dominant moral issue addressed in American history texts and courses. That paradigm, born out of the civil rights struggles of the mid-twentieth century and the revulsion against German race doctrine, has just about run its course. The moral certainties around which many academics have constructed their world views are beginning to crumble. It is well past time for a change.
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