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Mauritania refugees return home
Mauritania refugees return home after 20 long years exiled in Senegal.
CHAN:
Mauritanian refugees have begun returning home from exile in Senegal, nearly two decades after they fled their homeland due to ethnic purges.
STORY:
The first of thousands of black Mauritanian refugees returned home from exile in Senegal on Tuesday. In 1989 they were forced to flee bloody ethnic purges by the regime of former dictator Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya.
Hundreds of people were killed and some 80,000 expelled when Taya's government drove them out.
Mauritanian President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, who took office in April, pledged to improve human rights in the Islamic republic.
The refugees crossed the Senegal River by ferry to the Mauritanian side of the border town of Rosso. Their goods and livestock packed on white trucks of the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.
[Aw Abou Bakrin, Rosso Resident]:
"We are so happy for the arrival of these people today because it is an event we have waited 20 years for...It's a celebration for everybody, it is the joy for all Mauritania."
Roughly half of the Mauritanian refugees remaining in Senegal have already registered to return.
[Mamadou Keita,Refugee]:
"We will do our best to join our country again but we need to be shown at least the minimum of respect and that the things that have passed don't happen anymore."
There remain concerns over lingering racism in the Islamic state and unanswered calls for compensation and the trial of those responsible for the purges.
Length: 100
Rating: 4.30 (6 ratings)
Tags: Mauritania refugees Senegal exile ntdtv Mauritanian dictator Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya war
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Mauritania National Anthem
Independent from France in 1960, Mauritania annexed the southern third of the former Spanish Sahara (now Western Sahara) in 1976, but relinquished it after three years of raids by the Polisario guerrilla front seeking independence for the territory. Maaouya Ould Sid Ahmed TAYA seized power in a coup in 1984 and ruled Mauritania with a heavy hand for over two decades. A series of presidential elections that he held were widely seen as flawed. A bloodless coup in August 2005 deposed President TAYA and ushered in a military council that oversaw a transition to democratic rule. Independent candidate Sidi Ould Cheikh ABDALLAHI was inaugurated in April 2007 as Mauritania's first freely and fairly elected president. The country continues to experience ethnic tensions among its black population (Afro-Mauritanians) and White and Black Moor (Arab-Berber) communities, although the new government is attempting to ameliorate some of these tensions.
Capital:
name: Nouakchott
geographic coordinates: 18 07 N, 16 02 W
time difference: UTC 0 (5 hours ahead of Washington, DC during Standard Time)
Administrative divisions:
12 regions (regions, singular - region) and 1 capital district*; Adrar, Assaba, Brakna, Dakhlet Nouadhibou, Gorgol, Guidimaka, Hodh Ech Chargui, Hodh El Gharbi, Inchiri, Nouakchott*, Tagant, Tiris Zemmour, Trarza
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mr.html
Length: 39
Rating: 4.90 (13 ratings)
Tags: Mauritania National Anthem Adrar Assaba Brakna Dakhlet Nouadhibou Gorgol Guidimaka Hodh Ech Chargui Nouakchott
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Mauritania/Laswell
Another ImageJ Animation with Shape Shifting by Bill Laswell from Emerald Aether
Length: 285
Rating: 4.00 (1 ratings)
Tags: Art Animation Laswell ImageJ
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The train that keeps Mauritania connected - 19 April 08
The West African country of Mauritania is host to one of the longest trains in the world.
The train is mainly used to transport iron ore from the mines to ports on the Atlantic Ocean, but it also provides a lifeline for many Mauritanians who live deep in the Sahara desert.
Al Jazeera's Stefanie Dekker has the story.
Length: 102
Rating: 4.50 (23 ratings)
Tags: Mauritania Al Jazeera English Train Stefanie Dekker West Africa
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mauritania - music
فيديوا من ديم من آب من إنتاج منتديات شباب موريتانيا
Length: 129
Rating: 5.00 (1 ratings)
Tags: mauritania music
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Chinguetti the library of the desert (Mauritania)
Chinguetti la bibliothèque du désert
Chinguetti (Arabic: شنقيط) is a ksour or ancient trading centre in northern Mauritania, lying on the Adrar Plateau east of Atar.
Founded in the 13th century, as the center of several trans-Saharan trade routes, this small threatened city continues to attract visitors who admire its spare architecture, exotic scenery and its ancient libraries.
The indigenous Saharan architecture of older sectors of the city feature reddish dry stone and mud-brick houses,featuring flat roofs timbered from palms. Many of the older houses feature hand-hewn doors cut from massive ancient acacia tress that have long disappeared from the surroundings. Many homes include courtyards or patios that crowd along narrow streets leading to the central mosque.
Notable buildings in the town include The Friday Mosque of Chinguetti,an ancient structure of dry stone featuring a square minaret capped with five ostrich egg finials; the former French Foreign Legion fortress; and a tall watertower. The old quarter of the Chinguetti is home to five important manuscript libraries of scientific and Qur'anic texts, with many dating from the later Middle Ages.
The Chinguetti region has been occupied for thousands of years and once was a broad savannah. Cave paintings in the nearby Amoghar Pass feature pictures of giraffes, cows and people in a green landscape quite different from the starkly beautiful sand dunes of the desert landscape found in the region today.
The city was originally founded in 777, and by the 11th century had become a trading center for a confederation of Berber tribes known as the Sanhadja Confederation. Soon after settling Chinguetti, the Sanhadja first interacted with and eventually melded with the Almavorids, the founders of the Moorish Empire which stretched from present-day Senegal to Spain. The city's stark unadorned architecture reflects the strict, "Malikite" Islamic beliefs of the Almavorids.
After two centuries of decline, the city was effectively re-founded in the 13th century as a fortified cross-Saharan caravan trading center connecting the Mediterranean with Sub-Saharan Africa. Although the walls of the original fortification disappeared centuries ago, many of the buildings in the old section of the city still date from this period.
For centuries the city was a principal gathering place for pilgrims of the Maghreb to gather on the way to Mecca and it became known as a holy city in its own right, especially for pilgrims unable to make the long journey to the Arab Peninsula. It also became a center of Islamic religious and scientific scholarship in West Africa. In addition to religious training, the schools of Chinguetti taught students rhetoric, law, astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. For many centuries all of Mauritania was popularly known in the Arab world as "Bilad Shinqit, "the land of Chinguetti." Chinguetti is sometimes said to be the seventh holiest city of Islam. There is no recognition of this claim outside of West Africa, but whatever its ranking, the city remains one of the world's most important historical sites both in terms of the history of Islam and the history of West Africa.
Although largely abandoned to the desert, the city features a series of medieval manuscript libraries without peer in West Africa, and the area around the Rue des Savants was once famous as a gathering place for scholars to debate the finer points of Islamic law. Today its deserted streets continue to reflect the urban and religious architecture of the Moorish empire as it existed in the Middle Ages.
Today, along with the cities of Ouadane, Tichitt and Oualata, Chinguetti has been designated as a World heritage site. The Friday Mosque of Chinguetti, is widely considered by Mauritanians to be the national symbol of the country. Mauritania's recently discovered offshore oilfield was named Chinguetti in its honor.
While difficult to get to, Chinguetti's stark beauty and exotic, medieval Islamic architecture make the region an interesting, if challenging, tourist destination for both the adventurous traveler and the Islamic scholar.
VALPARD FILMS http://valpardfilms.free.fr
Length: 107
Rating: 4.80 (16 ratings)
Tags: Mauritania Mauritanie Mauretanien モーリタニア 모리타니 毛里塔尼亚 Chingueti Cinguetti Cingueti Chinguetti شنقيط موريتانية
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mauritania didi
mauritania didi
Length: 371
Rating: 4.70 (18 ratings)
Tags: mauritania didi
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