The war that for two years has confronted Morocco y al Polisario Front is causing heavy civilian casualties. Saharawi organizations and the Government in exile assure that they are at least 19 civilians killed at the hands of the Moroccan Army and also denounce the imprisonment of 43 people For political reasons.
Morocco keeps these Saharawi political activists locked up in penitentiary centers of the country, such as those of Bouizkarn, Ait Melloul or Tifiet, according to a complaint to EL PERIÓDICO DE ESPAÑA, a newspaper belonging to the same publishing group as this medium, Baih Baih Jamaamember of the Collective of Saharawi Defenders of Human Rights in Western Sahara (CODESA).
These people are “away from their families and deprived of receiving visits“, in addition to enduring “constant aggression and humiliation” under “racist practices” and “being totally isolated from the outside world,” denounces the organization.
Jamaa says that the reasons that have led them to prison are varied and unjustified. “Some are in prison for going out to celebrate the victory of Algeria in the Africa Cup” or “set up tents in the wrong place”. The situation has caused several prisoners to carry out hunger strikes due to the “bad conditions” in which they live. Some of them have even “four life sentences” and “they will never see their families again” recriminates Jamaa from the occupied territories.
Mohamed Lamín Haddi “was subjected to physical and psychological torture inside his cell, after announcing in a written letter sent to the prison management his intention to start a hunger strike to denounce the precarious conditions of his imprisonment and the lack of response to their legitimate demands”, explains Haddi’s mother in a report carried out by the League for the Protection of Saharawi Prisoners in Moroccan Prisons.
Cristina Martinez, a member of the Movement for Political Prisoners in the Sahara, explains that the prisons of the Kingdom of Morocco have “two doors”. Through the first, prisoners with Moroccan nationality enter who receive treatment according to their punishment; on the other, the Saharawi inmates detained for political demands or for participating in protests for self-determination. These they get a deal”inhuman and humiliating” in which “beatings and psychological and physical abuse“they are the daily bread.
Carles Mullet, senator for Compromis, recalls that he has denounced on numerous occasions these “injustices” suffered by Saharawi political prisoners through letters addressed to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, and in his relevant interventions in the Senate sessions. The only response that he has received from the Government, as he explained to this newspaper, is that of “throw balls out“. In his opinion, “the Government has never wanted to get wet directly” to solve this problem. The Moroccan embassy in Spain has declined to answer questions related to the situation of the prisoners to this newspaper.
The Polisario Front
The national delegate of the Polisario Front in Spain, Abdulah Arabicclaims that Rabat has killed 44 people by indiscriminate drone strikes since the end of the ceasefire with Morocco, on November 13, 2020. It is, according to Arabi, 19 civilians and 27 soldiers. The Polisario also recriminates “the sale of weapons without any statute of responsibility or compensation in the contracts” and cross out, “sheer international hypocrisy” to the countries that do business selling arms to Morocco, including Spain.
“The spanish government has the duty to participate in the resolution of the conflict as the administering power to guarantee the self-determination of the Saharawi people. We have nothing against bilateral relations with Morocco, but it has to finish the decolonization process” he points out in statements to EL PERIÓDICO DE ESPAÑA.
The Saharawi people claim to pronounce on your future in a referendum of self-determination on which the census has never reached consensus, among other things because Morocco claims its sovereignty over the former Spanish colony. Within the United Nations there 84 states that recognize the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). The decolonization of the territory of the province number 53 of the Spanish territory It was a process carried out by the mandate of the UN that required Spain and all countries to leave the occupied territories in Africa. The Franco dictatorship, which at that time administered the colony, was postponing the liberation of the territory, but it was not until the last moments of the dictator’s life, when Western Sahara was vacated. The Green March in Morocco caused thousands of settlers to begin taking over territories in the neighboring country, until they were expelled from their land to the desert between Mauritania and Algeria.
During this time, the Moroccan army has violated on numerous occasions the Geneva Conventions and International Law about the Saharawi people. Meanwhile, the Government of Morocco “try to impose that there is no war”explains Abdullah Arabi. The Spanish Government recognizes in a letter sent by Pedro Sánchez to King Mohamed VI, on March 14, that “the Moroccan way” to resolve the conflict is the most “serious, realistic and credible”.