Yahiya Ould Brahim does not lift his head or dare look at others in the eye.

Flanked by professors and anti-slavery activists, the 33-year-old runaway slave from Mauritania occasionally takes tentative looks at the audience at the international press centre in Paris.

Ten years ago, Ould Brahim escaped from the masters he says regularly beat him. But even today, half a world away from the rocky plateaus of the West African state of Mauritania, Ould Brahim still fears that he will be sent back to his country, where his former masters might track him down.

Twice, his appeal for refugee status was rejected by the French authorities. He does not trust the Mauritanian authorities to protect him should he have to return.

Born a slave

With a soft but determined voice, Ould Brahim says he was not forced into slavery, but born into a condition he now believes is “unbearable”. “I’ve always lived in slavery. My mother and father were born slaves,” he told FRANCE 24.

Ould Brahim is one of the estimated 100,000 to 500,000 black African Mauritanians who are slaves to the traditionally dominant Moorish community. Ould Brahim grazed his masters' livestock and did all the domestic chores around the house. “I went to bed after everybody else,” he recalls, “My master never gave me anything. I had no rights.”

“Every time my work displeased my masters, I was beaten. And my master told me not to scream when I was being beaten so as not to disturb the neighbours,” he said.

When Ould Brahim could no longer endure the violence, he decided to flee, a decision his relatives, also slaves, did not support. “They showed no solidarity towards me, they are too submissive, too resigned to their fate.”

Freedom at a price

Ould Brahim’s walk to freedom was a long one. It started with a two-day journey on one of Mauritania few tarmac roads to the capital, Nouakchott.

However, although Ould Brahim found a job in Nouakchott, changed his name and could rely on the solidarity of Haratin, the descendants of slaves, he never felt safe or free from his masters.

His journey continued with a paid passage to Europe on a frail fishing boat with twenty-five other African illegal immigrants.

Anti-slavery activist Abdel Ethmane

According to Abdel Ethmane, an anti-slavery activist and an upper-class Mauritanian whose relatives still own slaves, his country still has a long way to go to protect slaves who leave their masters. “Complaints lodged by former slaves against their masters are all either rejected or frozen,” says Ethmane.

Mauritania adopted a law making slavery a criminal offence in August 2007, but the practice persists and no slavemaster has ever been convicted on charges of slavery.

“A former slave can never live in dignity in Mauritanian society because it is geared against the descendants of slaves,” Oul Brahim says. “I was afraid of what I would be subjected to if my former masters found me.”

According to Ethmane, all the key jobs in Mauritania are held by the descendants of slave masters.

“The way of life of the ruling class, of the Arabic-Berber community, is based on slavery,” says anti-slavery activist Biram Ould Abeide. “The law isn’t applied because those who are in charge of applying it - the prefects, the governors, the district chiefs and the judges- all belong to the slave-owning ruling classes.”