ASVDH Statement on Morocco's recent harassment of Western Saharan Human Rights Defenders
26/10/2008 | Statements
Since the middle of this month the security services in El-Ayoune launched a widespread repressive campaign including the siege on the district where the Vice President of the ASVDH, Mrs. Djimi Elghalia, lives, and also where the chairman of the Committee for the Defense of Self-determination, Mr. Sidi Mohamed Dadach lives. Many members of the Executive Office of the ASVDH were prevented from visiting the district, including Brahim Sabbar on 16/10/2008, Daha Rahmouni, Elhairach Mohamed Fadel and Brahim Dahane on 19/10/2008, who have been subjected to harassment and threats….
Those corps and services have also surrounded the homes of the mothers of the disappeared fifteenth Sahrawi and prevent them from organizing a sit in on 21/10/2008 which coincided with the visit of the Moroccan Minister of Justice to El-Ayoune. Those mothers have also been barred from meeting the minister and to attend the conference which he presided in his party’s headquarter, and they have been threatened and subjected to humiliation and ill-treatment… In the same context, many citizens were abducted, tortured and thrown outside the city, as was the case of the political prisoners released lately: Hassan Dah and Mohamed Bachiri…
In the town of Smara many of the violations and attacks against Sahrawi citizens and defenders of human rights have been registered as injured women and children, due to violent interference to disperse demonstrators. The member of the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights in Smara, Mrs. Ngueia Boukhars was severely beaten and her pay was freezed, and also the house of the secretary general of the same Committee and member of the Coordinating Council of the ASVDH, Mr. Hammadi Naciri, was raided he was suspended in his work and his salary stopped without any justification. Mr. Naciri was summoned by the administration, for which he works, for resumption of work, but when attending to the headquarters he was delivered the decision of his suspension from work on October 13 2008. Also the young Sahrawi, Mr. Abba Ali Ahmim was arrested and incarcerated in the black prison of El-Ayoune awaiting trial on the background of these demonstrations.
And in Boujdour a peaceful sit-in, organized by the unemployed Sahrawi graduates, was violently dispersed by Moroccan forces of rapid intervention resulting in severe injuries and the arrest of the young Sahrawi, Mr. Mohamed Ghali Mansouri, who was incarcerated in the black prison of El-Ayoune on charges of incitement and attack on a security man, after being subjected to torture. He was sentenced to six months in prison….
The Sahrawi cities live under a strong presence of the police, army, gendarmerie and auxiliary forces in the streets and alleyways of the cities and within and around the educational institutions and Internet cafes and neighbourhoods that had seen enormous demonstrations…..
The Sahrawi political detainees in the black prison and Moroccan prisons suffer from the policy of restriction exercised by the prison administration. So as prisoners of conscience they are being humiliated and subjected to ill-treatment, inspection and removal of property and tampering in solitary confinement and pressure them when they exercise of their right to hunger strike…
Thus, the Sahrawi Association of Grave Human Rights Violations Committed by the Moroccan State, while reiterating some of the cases mentioned above, as examples:
- Strongly denounces these flagrant violations of human rights, which go against the the Moroccan State’s commitment at the UN.
- Condemns the harassment against members of its Executive Office as siege of their homes, their arrest in the main streets without legal basis and subjecting them to harassment and threats of torture and what was Mr. Naicir Hammadi, member of the Coordinating Council and member of the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights in Smara, has been subjected to (harassment, suspension from work, gel of his salary without any respect to the legal procedures established in this filed.
- Declares its strong solidarity with all Sahrawi political prisoners and calls for their release unconditionally, among them its member and President of the local branch of Boujdour, Mr. Mohamed Tahlil, and also its other member, Mr. Ahmed Mahmoud Haddi Elkainan
- Calls on the United Nations to protect the Sahrawi citizens and human rights defenders and former political prisoners, and to put pressure on the Moroccan State to respect human rights in accordance with its international obligations and to expand the powers of MINURSO to include the observation of human rights in Western Sahara and the protection of the freedom of expression and movement and the right to assembly and organization…
- Calls on all local and international human rights organizations to work to expose these grave violations, especially that the Moroccan state is trying with all the means to mystify what is really going on breaches and violations in order to deceive the local and international public opinion.
ASVDH Executive Office
