The continued oppression of the Saharawi people

Today we had a meeting with a Saharawi human rights organisation, that works with the human rights violations committed by the Moroccan government against the Saharawi people in Western Sahara.

There are over 500 missing Saharawi persons, and many of them are believed to have died in Moroccan prisons. The majority of these were not even political activists, but were abducted simply due to their Saharawi identity.

Many of those detained in Moroccan prisons are tortured and maltreated in overcrowded spaces. We have seen many photographs of those who have been abused, also outside the prisons. We met with a man who had himself been imprisoned due to his political activism. On the 21st of May 2005, Saharawi demonstrations against Moroccan oppression were initiated as a peaceful intifada. The protests were severly cracked down on, and the man we met was one of those detained. That he shared his story with us is one of the stongest things I have experienced. The Moroccan soldiers came to his house, and sexually abused his sister and his mother while he was there. He was then taken to a Moroccan prison, where he was tortured for several days. When he was finally brought before a tribunal, the judge told him that he could have his self-determination in the Moroccan prison. Clearly the tribunals are not independent, and will not give you a fair hearing.

Right now there is a Spanish judge who wants to bring some of the Moroccan responsibles of the human rights abuses to court in Spain. Hopefully, this can succed. However, the Spanish government is not actively promoting the Saharawi cause. While the Spanish people have done very much to support the Saharawi, the government has not yet denounced the human rights abused committed by Morocco. Spain has strong commercial interests in Western Sahara, and has access to 35 % of the phosphate of the occupied territories, as well as gaining from the EU fisheries deal with Marocco, that opens up for EU fishing on the coast of Western Sahara. A group of EU lawyers has deemed this illegal, as international law forbids the exploitation of the natural resources of a occupied territory without the consent of its people.

When it comes to the French government the situation is worse. Due to its close relations with Marocco, it has persitently used its veto in the UN Security Council to stop the MINURSO from getting a mandate to protect human rights. This means that the UN force in place cannot protect the Saharawi people from Morroccan abuses. The MINURSO force was installed to secure the popular referendum over the fate of Western Sahara. However, the referendum has still not taken place. Meanwhile, MINUSRO forces are allocated twice the amount of funding that the refugee camps get in total.

The dire human rights situation in the occupied territories make it even more clear that without a political solution the Saharawi people cannot be free.