Mauritania dockers protest
[Note: Translated from French. See the original at Alakhbar]
Clashes between law enforcement and dockworkers at the Port of Friendship in Nouakchott who were protesting against precarious working conditions, resumed on Monday afternoon at the intersection at Riadh Bamako neighborhood in Nouakchott.
Dockworkers blocked the road leading to the port and burned tires as the convoy of police came to disperse them. But these could push the protesters half a mile from the highway by the excessive use of tear gas, Alakhbar reporters found.
Several protesters have vanished and some residents of the surrounding neighborhoods were forced to flee their homes which were flooded by the smell of grenades.
In the confusion, two cars, a bus and a truck collided.
Previously, the dockers were hanging loudspeakers on vehicles cruising the neighborhoods of Nouakchott to encourage their peers to resist the security forces they accused of impeding their sit-in in order to claim their “right to better working conditions.”
This morning, the Gendarmerie and the National Guard had “violently” dispersed a sit-in dockworkers started for a few days at the Port of Friendship at Nouakchott. Fifteen dockers were injured and others arrested.
Aba Ould Mounazih, a docker who participated audit sit-in, told Alakhbar the Gendarmerie and the National Guard have used force to disperse them, which explains the large number of casualties in the ranks of the dockers.
This “crackdown” at the port happened away from the eye of journalists, who are banned from approaching the port entrances or risk seeing their work materials confiscated.
Dockers began a sit-in starting on Wednesday, 20 March in Nouakchott and Nouadhibou.