Six human rights activists from the United States, Mauritania, and Sudan called on African Americans, the U.S. Congress and the U.S. media yesterday to wake up to black slavery in northern Africa and to end the political silence they said effectively condones its existence....
The chief witness was William H. Twaddel, deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, who in somewhat elliptical testimony declared that "I don't think anyone is enslaving anyone in Mauritania" but added later, "I'd feel very uncomfortable saying that [slavery] didn't exist." ....
Twaddel's testimony was seconded by former representative and Congressional Black Caucus chairman Mervyn M. Dymally of California ... who appeared as a $120,000-a-year lobbyist for the Mauritanian government.... He said, "I don't deny that there may be the appearance of slavery" in Mauritania, but said one has to be careful when one calls it "black slavery. General Colin Powell wouldn't be considered black in Mauritania," he said, and neither would most Jamaicans.
6/17/96
The Washington Post, March 14, 1996:
