Human Rights Watch report on Western Sahara and Tindouf reignites debate

22/12/2008

A new report on human rights in Western Sahara has moved Morocco, Algeria and the Polisario Front to defend their actions and issue new accusations.

By Sarah Touahri and Naoufel Cherkaoui for Magharebia in Rabat – 22/12/08

[Sarah Touahri] HRW's Sarah Whitson (left) said that while repression has eased in Western Sahara and Tindouf, Moroccan authorities still have a long way to go.

Representatives of Morocco and the Polisario Front have traded barbs in the wake of the release Friday (December 19th) of a new report on the state of human rights in Western Sahara and refugee camps in neighbouring Algeria. The three-year Human Rights Watch study assessed the situation of residents of both territories and concluded that much work remains to be done.

In the report, which came just days after Morocco and the Polisario accused one another of human rights abuses on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the NGO reasserts the Sahrawi people's right to the freedoms of speech, association and assembly, and to self-determination.

Researchers concluded that Morocco has curbed these rights by introducing laws to punish offences deemed to undermine Morocco's "territorial integrity", with arbitrary arrests, biased legal rulings, restrictions on free association and assembly and police violence and harassment which have gone unpunished.

The Polisario Front supported these claims, stressing after the report's release that it is "important that the international community be made aware of the grave violations of human rights committed by the occupying Moroccan forces".

Morocco dismissed the complaints as "unfounded". According to the interior ministry, the Moroccan government has imposed restrictions only on freedom of speech and activities that represent a threat to public order and security, in accordance with the international pact on civil and political rights.

The authorities also explained that certain extreme measures are necessary to avoid violence. According to the report, protestors have thrown stones and Molotov cocktails during certain pro-independence rallies, causing injury to law enforcement personnel and members of the public and damaging property.

Human Rights Watch did praise the Moroccan state for opening the door to a wider debate on the issue of the Sahara. One example is the legal recognition of a political party which calls itself the "Way of Democracy" (An-Nahj Addimoqrati), whose platform includes the possibility of a referendum for Sahrawi independence.

Over the course of the study, Human Rights Watch investigators also visited the refugee camps across the Algerian border in Tindouf. One observation made during these visits was that the Polisario Front takes great pains to marginalise any voices directly defying its leadership or the general direction of its policies.

Opponents are not imprisoned, and residents are allowed to criticise the day-to-day running of camp business, but fear and social pressure prevent some camp residents from leaving Tindouf to settle in Western Sahara.

The rights of camp residents in Tindouf remain vulnerable, the report claims, due to the camps' isolation and the lack of supervision by host country Algeria to ensure that the Sahrawis living there are afforded their full human rights.

In the recommendations made in the report, Morocco is called upon to respect freedoms and Algeria is encouraged to allow monitoring of human rights on the ground in Tindouf, through a suitable United Nations mechanism like MINURSO. According to Human Rights Watch, a letter has been sent to the Algerian authorities, but so far no response has been forthcoming.

The Polisario expressed its disappointment that the report "ignored and failed to denounce the most fundamental of all violations" by Morocco. In its estimation, the "mother" of all these wrongs is the "denial of the right of the Sahrawi people to exercise its inalienable democratic right to self-determination".

For Khadija Ryadi, chair of the Moroccan Human Rights Association, the report is significant because it covers the human rights situation in Tindouf, where her organisation has never had access.

"We have some representation in Laâyoune, but not in Tindouf," she told Magharebia. "I think the findings are important, as is the recommendation to set up a mechanism for evaluating human rights in the Sahara."

In an official statement, Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa Director for Human Rights Watch, said: "Repression has eased somewhat, and today dissidents are testing the red lines. Moroccan authorities – to their credit – ask us to judge them not against their own past record, but against their international human rights engagements."

"By that standard," she added, "they have a long way to go."