Omar, as he is fondly called by his friends and comrades in the human rights movement, is the president of the Association for the Families of the Detained and Disappeared of Western Sahara (AFAPREDESA). A true Saharawi, he prepares a strong yet delicious brew of tea.
First and foremost, I would like to express my appreciation to KONTRAS, IKOHI and AFAD for their noble and remarkable work in the search for the thousands of disappeared people in Asia. We equally express our appreciation to the support given us by Linking Solidarity, without which, many of our activities and initiatives would not have been made possible.
Secondly, I would like to appreciate the brilliant contribution of the different organizations in Asia and Latin America which are represented here. Thanks to their contribution, we have been given a more profound knowledge of the reality of enforced disappearances in the different continents.
Thirdly, I am going to tell you about Western Sahara, my country, which is located in the Northwest of Africa. The people of Sahara were colonized for more than 120 years, first by Spain, and from 1975 by Morocco.
The question of Western Sahara is one of the conflicts that should not have happened. The solution had been clearly indicated by the United Nations since the 1970s. The people of Sahara have the right to self-determination and independence in accordance with the United Nations Resolution No. 1514 (XV) dated 14 December 1960, which grants the possibility of independence to colonized countries and their people. In the same vein, the International Court of Justice, in its famous Resolution dated 16 October 1975, concluded that there had been no ties of sovereignty between Western Sahara on the one hand, and Morocco and Mauritania on the other hand, since there were no natural elements that existed for modifying UN Resolution 1514 (XV) with respect to the Western Saharan people’s right to self-determination.
It is obvious that Spain gravely erred in 1974 by handing over a territory which did not belong to its two neighboring countries, namely Morocco and Mauritania. Such historical error was made possible through the support of France and United States. As a consequence, the simple process of decolonization which was supposed to culminate in the independence of Western Sahara was transformed into a bloody war between the Morrocan and Mauritanian forces and the people of Sahara who demonstrated exemplary resistance.
Morocco and its allies probably thought that it would be a simple task for 200,000 soldiers to annihilate the Saharan combatants, along with their families and cattle. Despite the generous military assistance of West Morocco, the intervention of the French airforce and the support of the Arab oligarchy from the Gulf, Mauritania withdrew from the conflict and signed a peace accord with the Polisario Front1 in 1979. The Moroccan government was then obliged to accept that they would not be able to achieve military victory by the end of the 1980s. Thus, negotiations between the Polisario Front and the Moroccan government was undertaken through the auspices of the United Nations. In 1988, the two parties accepted the proposals of the UN Secretary-General and the President of the African Union. Two years later, the UN proposed an arrangement plan to end the conflict between the Polisario Front and the government of Morocco adopted through Security Council Resolution No. 690.
The United Nations then appointed former US Secretary of State James Baker as Commissioner in order to find a solution to the conflict. After negotiating with the two parties, an agreement was forged known as Houston Accord which was signed by the Polisario Front and the government of Morocco. But again, the latter failed to fulfill its promises mentioned in the agreement. Given this new hindrance, James Baker proposed a new Peace Plan, which centered on the holding of a referendum for the self-determination of Sahara under the supervisión of the United Nations after a period of 4-5 years of autonomy. This proposal was accepted by the Polisario Front with the unanimous backing of the Security Council, but Morroco rejected this new opportunity for peace.
Morocco, however, hastily signed the earlier peace accords, fearing the possible pro-independence results of the referendum if ever it takes place. Hence, the risk of another war is still possible.
It must be emphasized that Spain has a historical responsibility to the people of Western Sahara. Sahara was a Spanish colony and it was Spain which could have ensured the process of decolonization which could have given the Saharawi people their independence. It did not do so, yet Spain still has the capacity to lead a process towards that direction. But it so happens that Spain also has interests on Morocco. It is clear that the struggle in Western Sahara is also affected by the vagaries of international politics. The new government of Spain under the leadership of the Partido Socialista Obrero Español2 (PSOE / Spanish Workers Socialist Party) began its diplomatic moves with a number of confused statements on the Sahara question, generating nervousness and concern among the Saharawi people. It is hoped that the Spanish government will soon rectify its position and support, in an equivocal manner, the holding of a referendum on self-determination in consonance with the recommendation of the United Nations. This is the only way of achieving lasting peace in Western Sahara.
After this brief summary of the general situation in Western Sahara, I shall now discuss my personal experience on enforced disappearance. When Moroccan troops invaded my country in 1975, my family moved to Gantan—a Saharan locality which was sold by Spain to Morocco in 1959. There was an important Saharan community in this place. However, grave human rights violations were perpetrated by Moroccan forces in Gantan. Entire families were detained without being released and subsequently disappeared. I remember a relative who became a victim of these atrocities, Naaya Ali Burhema, a young cousin whose whereabouts are still not known. The same fate happened to my uncle Cheij Hamadi who remains missing.
Cheij Hamadi was a trade union leader who worked for the improvement of the conditions of the Saharan workers. The Moroccans suspected that he was a sympathizer of the Polisario Front. Since his detention, the Moroccan authorities have never given any information about his whereabouts.
In 1981, another uncle Omar Cheij Ali was arrested along with his son Salama and the two were detained in a secret place for ten years. Omar Ceij was a father of seven children who suffered tremendously from his detention. Before his detention, Omar was a robust man but when he was freed in 1991, he looked like a skeleton. They had tortured him by electrocuting him in the sensitive parts of his body. They also pulled the hair off his chest and burned his body with cigarrettes.
I myself had a bitter experience of enforced disappearance, when I was arrested on 16 December 1984 in Marrakech, where I was staying as a university student. Together with my other colleagues, we were brought to the police of Jamaa El Fanaa, a place which was very much visited by tourists. Then, they brought us to a secret place located in the prison of Bou Lemharez. In this sinister place, we had our hands tied and we were blindfolded. They started to torture us using different techniques such as the falaga which consisted of tying our feet with strings and a whip, electrocuting our sensitive body parts and suspending us in the air in different postures (which they would sometimes call as grilled chicken or airplane). Our torturers wanted to know what relationship we had with the Polisario Front. This clandestine center also had no proper sanitation and no adequate food was provided, since those who were detained were there in order to die.
In my case, they freed me on 31 December 1984. Until now, we do not know why they arrested us. Neither do we know why they released us. From that day on, I started to dedicate myself to the defense of human rights. My activities were done in a clandestine manner and were not without risks.
When Morocco released 322 Saharans who were detained in different clandestine centers in 1991, we contacted people from the international media in order to denounce what these people went through for 16 years. Two Swiss journalists responded to our call and entered the said territory without disclosing the real purpose of their visit. The two journalists, Didier Schmutz and W. Hugues were able to secretly interview about 20 survivors. But in those two days of finalizing their work, the authorities discovered what we were doing. They tried to arrest me so I did not have any other choice than to escape and seek protection in the refugee camps of Algeria. I arrived in one of the refugee camps on November 13, 1991.
In those refugee camps, I became a member of the Association for the Saharan Families of the Detained and Disappeared (AFAPREDESA). One of the tasks of AFAPREDESA is to fight enforced disappearances which is one of the means used by oppressive regimes and dictatorships to silence the voice of all those persons who are against their politics of oppressión. Disappearances contitute a degradation of human dignity and a grave violation of international humanitarian law which recognizes the juridical personality of each person. These violate the right to liberty and security of one’s person, such as the right not to be submitted to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Enforced disappearances have occured in many countries of the world.
The international community was initially not bothered by this phenomenon until the families of the disappeared from Latin America began condemning this gross human rights violation. The role being played by the Latin American Federation of Associations of Relatives of Disappeared-Detainees (FEDEFAM) in this struggle is not only that of a pioneer but of an organization that continues to lead the movement of families of the disappeared in the world with the exemplary collaboration of the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD). These two federations have given important support to Africa to facilitate global action so as to put an end to this inhuman practice.
Any individual who knows these huge challenges should not turn his back. Each one of us is called to contribute so that no person will be an object of enforced disappearance and grave violations of human rights—so that no person will suffer from hunger, misery, injustice, terrorism, war and violation of basic human rights. It is a shame that cruelty continues to be committed without being rejected and condemned by the international community, which does not provide sufficient pressure so that such atrocities may never ever be repeated.
Footnotes
1 Polisario is the Spanish acronym of the Frente Popular para la Liberacion de Saguia el Hamra y Rio de Oro (Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el Hamra and Rio de Oro), a guerilla organization formed in 10 May 1973 to fight for the independence of Western Sahara.
2 The Spanish Socialists were able to gain political power after defeating the right-of-center Partido Popular (PP / People’s Party) in general elections of 2004.
