AFAPREDESA
The Association for the Families of Saharawi Prisoners and the Disappeared
Struggle continues for Aminatou Haidar
"At
the age of 20 years my long journey to the end of hell began."
So says the mother of two, former political prisoner and human rights activist Aminatou Haidar of the Western Sahara.
As a member of the banned and exiled Polisario Front and a well-known activist in the north African country bordered by Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania, Haidar has been fighting since she was 17 years old for the self determination of the Western Sahara people living in the territories occupied by the Moroccan government.
June has been a significant month in her political life: it was in this month that she passed a few milestones. In June 1991 she was released from jail after spending four years in the notorious Black Prison near her hometown of El Ayoun.
June 17 is close to her heart because Saharawi people commemorate the 1970 Zemla massacre in which 11 people were killed. Spain was the occupying power then.
During the march last year commemorating the 35th anniversary of the event, she was accosted and assaulted by the police and later abducted from the emergency section of their local hospital where she was seeking medical help. She spent seven months in prison and was released in January .
In one of the testimonies she has recorded about her detention which she has shared with international human rights activists at various podia, Haidar gives a raw account of her incarceration.
"They began to torture me from the first instant I arrived in the special place for interrogation where torture has one dimension: slaps, kicks, insults and threats of rape. The more I resisted, the more the methods of torture diversified and sadism attained its heights. Rags impregnated with chemicals like detergents or other strong substances were shoved into my mouth. I was subjected to blows, electric shocks, cold showers . . ."
The militant activist in Haidar was born when she rebelled against systematic policies of segregation she says the Moroccan government have imposed on the Saharawi people since they occupied their territory in 1975 when Spain's colonial rule ended.
According to Haidar, the Saharawi is the last colonial outpost in Africa and her political organisation, the Polisario Front, is lobbying the rest of the world to pressure the Moroccan government to pull out of it and respect the United Nations General Assembly's resolution that was adopted in 1979 recognising their need for self determination and urging Morocco to withdraw from their country.
When Spain withdrew from Saharawi, Mauritania, which administered some parts of the country, later also withdrew and these liberated territories have been named the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) by the current Polisario leadership.
The current Moroccan policies in Saharawi discriminate against the indigenous people and bar them from meaningful partcipation in their country's economic activities. Western Sahara is rich in phosphates, and it is the sixth major exporter of the mineral in the world.
Haidar says Moroccans occupy all decision-making jobs while menial jobs are the preserve of locals. In schools, she says, only the Saharawi children are subjected to corporal punishment. Although they are in the same schools as the Moroccans, Saharawi children are never given top marks even if they are intelligent as educators also report to the state security police.
The Saharawi have a special mark on their identity books to distinguish them from Moroccans. People in the occupied territories have to endure secret abductions and detention without trial, making them to live in fear.
"The abductions started just after the occupation. That is how I was abducted when I was 20 and last year again. We still cannot account for more than 500 Saharawi people who have just disappeared," she says. Fifteen youths trying to escape to Spain using a small boat last December were caught and they have never been seen again. Haidar says it is widely accepted that the Morocco secret police have engineered their disappearance.
Haidar has vowed to continue fighting even at the expense of harassment and torture to herself and her family for as long as economic, social and political rights and the freedom of political association are denied in Saharawi.
"The human rights violations have strengthened my will to fight for the rights of the Saharawi."
Haidar says her children have not been spared by the police. When she was arrested last year they wrote a letter to Polisario president Mohamed Abdelaziz and policemen assaulted her teenage daughter at her school recently to try to intimidate her.
Haidar arrived in South Africa two weeeks ago. She was meeting NGOs and other civil organisations to garner support for the Polisario Front. She was here with a small delegation at the invitation of the government. It has taken a position to support the Saharawi in their fight for self-determination. South Africa recognises the SADR and has diplomatic relations with it.
Haidar has a special affinity to South Africa as we have suffered the same hardships of systematic racial discrimination as the Saharawi.
"South Africa feels and understands our sufferings," she says.
A foreign affairs spokesperson concedes that hosting the Saharawi delegation is likely to alienate the Moroccan government further. Morocco pulled out of South Africa when we recognised the SADR and invited it to open a diplomatic office here in 2004. Morocco has since scaled down its representation here and is represented by a Charge d' Affairs.
Both the African Union and the United Nations recognise the Saharawi's right to self-determination.
The UN's latest report on human rights affirmed it was aware of gross violations of human rights in SADR. Haidar says the world body is toothless and too weak to enforce its own resolutions to free the Saharawi.
"The UN has lost credibility on this one, just like most democratic countries in the European Union. The silence of the international community and the weakness of the UN will force the Polisario to resume the armed struggle because we cannot stand by and watch our children being killed and our people disappearing.
"As human rights activists we opt for the peaceful option, but if the world does not intervene to protect the peaceful process, we may have to resort to war. The international community should act now."
Haidar's work is highly regarded internationally. She has received several awards for it. She was one of the 11 nominees last year for the Andrei Sakharov prize in honour of the Soviet dissident and Nobel Prize winner.
The award has previously been given to eminent figures like Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan and the presidents of East Timor and Kosovo, Xanana Gusmao and Ibrahim Rugova, for their defence of human rights. From South Africa Haidar leaves for countries like Spain and the US to canvass support for her course. She suspects she may be arrested when she goes back home in September.
Despite uncertainty about what will happen to her when she gets home, she says she is not contemplating fighting this struggle from exile. She wants to be with the oppressed people of the Saharawi.
Her maxim is: "You can kill me but you can never kill my convictions."