10/03/2013
by Nadir Bouhmouch:   Born in Casablanca and raised in Rabat, Nadir Bouhmouch is an award-winning filmmaker, human rights activist, feminist and film/global justice student at San Diego State University.
“My first encounter with the Sahrawi-Moroccan conflict also happens to be one of the first and most striking memories of my life. Only three years after the ceasefire, I was four years old when my mother, my grandfather and grandmother were on a vacation in Merzouga, a small desert town in south-eastern Morocco just a few kilometers from the Algerian border. During our stay in Merzouga, my mother– a fan of adventure…..(cont.)

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July 2013 – A study tour of the Saharawi towns of southern Morocco and the occupied territory of Western Sahara has reported to MINURSO about their findings as human rights observers from France, Germany and Australia.

The main purpose of the tour was to test the right of Saharawi political prisoners to receive mail. Through the campaign “Write for their release” (Ecrirepourlesliberer.com), letters sent through the post are known not to reach them, so letters were brought to four prisons to deliver in person to the director of the prison. Only one accepted the letters and promised to pass them on to the prisoners.  The delegation also met the families of the prisoners and gave them a copy of the letter sent to their family member.

All the experiences of excessive surveillance, interference with the itinerary and the consequences visited upon Saharawis who receive international delegations are noted.

“We witnessed a whole people under siege, whose resistance is getting stronger even though Morocco’s repression continues”, said the leader of the delegation, Claude Mangin-Asfari, wife of Saharawi political prisoner, Enaâma Asfari, one of the Gdeim Izik group of prisoners.

Study tour report to MINURSO >>

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC STATEMENT, 12 September 2013

Revelations published this week by a Spanish team of forensic experts confirming the deaths of eight Sahrawis, including two children, who disappeared in 1976 and providing unprecedented evidence that they were extrajudicially executed by Moroccan armed forces underscore the continuing need to uncover the full truth about hundreds of cases of enforced disappearance from previous decades and to ensure justice for victims and their families. (…cont.)

Amnesty Public Statement  >>

MEHERIS: A possibility of hope – Mass graves and the first Sahrawi disappeared who have been identified
Carlos Martín Beristain, Francisco Etxeberria Gabilondo
Hegoa, Bilbao, Septemer 2013

The document contains the findings of a forensic and research team, working together with a genetic laboratory at the University of the Basque Country, on a case of Sahrawi missing persons in Fadret Leguiaa in the region of Samra, near Amgala and Meheris, in February 1976.
…..The issue of the disappeared during the armed conflict and violence against Sahrawi civilians is still present in the lives of their families (cont

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Green Left Weekly,Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Minetu Larabas Sueidat is a young Saharawi woman living in refugee camps in Tinduf in the south-west of Algeria….she describes the lives and struggles of Saharawi people, forced to live as refugees and continuing to struggle for their freedom. She can be contacted at: [email protected].

“As a young Saharawi woman who born and lives in exile away from the land of my ancestors, I wish to share with the world the hard life that my people, especially my generation, have to deal with in the Saharawi refugee camps here in Tinduf.
Five years ago, I met with amazing group from Australia who came to attend Saharawi Workers Congress in the Saharawai refugee camps,…”  (cont.)

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June, 2013. Copyright © 2013 Human Rights Watch

The HRW report covers six cases of which 2 are important Saharawi ones, viz the Casablanca 7 and Gdeim Izik group.

HRW summary of report findings >>

Read full report here >>