Fri 19 Dec 2008, 12:13 GMT
RABAT, Dec 19 (Reuters) – Human Rights Watch accused Morocco on Friday of beating and torturing independence campaigners in Western Sahara and said U.N. peacekeepers should start monitoring human rights in the territory.

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AWSA outraged by killing of two Saharawi students
Press Release:  4th December 2008 –  Australia Western Sahara Association
Members of AWSA (Vic) meeting during their ordinary Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Wednesday 3rd of December are saddened and shocked by the outrageous killing of two young Saharawi students in Agadir (Morocco).
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02/12/2008
Two Saharawi students were murdered, four injured and three others arrested by the Moroccan authorities after a peaceful sit-in Saharawi students organised at a bus station in the Moroccan city of Agadir, human rights organisations in Western Sahara reported.

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Remarks by Aminatou Haidar
25th Annual Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, November 13th, 2008
Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC

Saharawi human rights activist addressed the audience participating to the reception organised on her honour last Thursday in Washington where she received the Robert Kennedy Award for Human Rights.

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Aminatou Haidar to be presented with RFK Human Rights Award for her campaign for the self-determination of Western Sahara and against government abuses and disappearances of prisoners of conscious. The ceremony will take place in Washington, D.C the morning of November 13th, in the Russell Senate Office Building’s Caucus Room.

Washington DC, September 16th, 2008— Aminatou Haidar is the 2008 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award Laureate. Ms. Haidar is being recognized for her courageous campaign for self-determination of Western Sahara from its occupation by Morocco and against forced disappearances and abuses of prisoners of conscious. Regularly referred to as the “Sahrawi Gandhi,” Ms. Haidar is one of Western Sahara’s most prominent human rights defenders.
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Ould Rachid reveals violations committed by Army Officers against Sahrawi civilians
El Mundo
17 June 2008
By Ali Lmrabet

Rabat. “There are several persons […], that is three or four army officers who committed what could be called war crimes against prisoners outside off the battlefield” and “many civilians who were thrown into the desert from helicopters or buried alive,” simply because they were Sahrawis.

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Several YouTube videos posted recently show what has been happening in May: demonstrations on campus, tear gas, beatings, rooms ransacked in student residences etc. The authorities trash the Saharawi students’ rooms so they will go home and not take their exams. Moroccan papers reported 300 arrests in Marrakech.

Rabab Amidane’s videos can be viewed on the following links (for a quicker overview select 1, 2, 5, 7)
Video 1
Video 2
Video 3
Video 4
Video 5
Video 6
Video 7

101.5 FM – Sundays 9 AM (ACST)

You can listen to the interview:

7 May 2008 A prominent human rights group has again denounced the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara as one of the ‘most repressive’ situations in the world today.The U.S.-based human rights watchdog Freedom House yesterday released its annual report on the world’s most authoritarian regimes and gravest human rights situations.Titled Worst of the Worst: The World’s Most Repressive Societies 2008, the report classified Morocco’s presence in Western Sahara alongside more well-known human rights catastrophes like China, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe.

Read the section on Western Sahara here >>

Read the full report here (PDF) >>

New York, May 8, 2008) – Citing “lack of evidence,” Moroccan authorities closed an investigation into police abuse allegations made by two human rights defenders whose testimony the prosecutor refused to solicit, Human Rights Watch said today.

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