A tragedy for Western Sahara

[CHIMO]

Anyone who has seen Hunger, Steve McQueen's harrowing film about the Maze prison hunger strike, will have some idea of just how horrific it is to die by starvation. Bobby Sands, a fit 27-year-old man, survived 66 days without food. Aminatou Haidar, a delicate 42-year-old, is on the 29th day of her hunger strike; with a perforated ulcer and a constitution weakened by years of imprisonment and torture, there are fears that she will not survive much longer.

She is now too weak to stand, and the director of Lanzarote hospital, Domingo de Guzmán, has warned that Haidar's life expectancy is now "hours or days rather than weeks". Listing her symptoms as hypotension, nausea, anaemia, muscular-skeletal atrophy and gastric haemorrhaging, Dr Guzman believes she is nearing an irreversible deterioration that could result in her death even if she were to abandon the hunger strike. But abandoning her strike is not something Haidar, a human rights activist nominated for the Nobel peace prize, will countenance unless her single demand – to be allowed to return to her country – is met.

Haidar has been on hunger strike in Lanzarote airport since being deported there from her home in Western Sahara on 15 November. Two days earlier she had flown back to Laayoune, the largest city in Western Sahara, from New York, where she had picked up the Train Foundation's Civil Courage human rights award. On her arrival in Laayoune she wrote her address on her landing card as being in "Western Sahara" rather than "Morocco". As a Saharawi, she has never recognised Moroccan sovereignty over her native land which has been occupied by Morocco in breach of international law for over 34 years. In the past Morocco has chosen to overlook her numerous "landing card protests", but on this occasion she was interrogated, stripped of her passport and expelled to the volcanic Canary Island which lies less than 80 miles off the African coast.

Spain offered to give Haidar refugee status or Spanish citizenship so she could be allowed to return home, but she rejected both options on the grounds that she did not want to become "a foreigner in her own land". According to Human Rights Watch, her forced expulsion breached Article 12 (4) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by Morocco, which makes it clear that no one can be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter their own country. In addition, by preventing her return to Western Sahara, Spanish authorities may have breached both Spanish national law and Article 2 of Protocol 4 of the European convention for the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Article 12 (2) of the ICCPR also stipulates that everyone shall be free to leave any country.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/dec/14/hunger-strike-aminatou-haidar

[CHIMO]

1. In Third Week of Hunger Strike, Ailing Western Saharan Human Rights Activist Aminatou Haidar Demands

In Third Week of Hunger Strike, Ailing Western Saharan Human Rights Activist Aminatou Haidar Demands Moroccan Authorities Allow Her Return to Occupied Homeland

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to a part of the world few Americans pay attention to. I’m talking about the Western Sahara, a disputed territory in North Africa bordering Morocco, Mauritania, and Algeria. Formerly controlled by Spain, Morocco has occupied most of the territory since 1975, just when the Western Sahara was gaining its independence from Spain.
In October a Western Saharan independence activist Aminatou Haidar was in New York to receive the 2009 Civil Courage prize for her non-violent resistance to the Moroccan occupation of Sahrawi land. She is often called the “Sahrawi Gandhi.”

When she returned home a few weeks later she was arrested by Moroccan officials. They seized her Moroccan passport and expelled her against her will to an airport on Spain’s Canary Islands. Moroccan authorities say she was deported because refused to sign a paper saying she was a Moroccan citizen and declared Western Sahara as her country of origin on the immigration entry form.

Aminatou Haidar began a hunger strike inside Lanzarote airport in the Canary Islands 2 weeks ago demanding that she be allowed to return to her home in the Western Sahara. But she remains in the airport, surrounded by supporters, her health deteriorating.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/1/in_third_week_of_hunger_strike
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2009/dec/video/dnB20091201a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=00:29:08

[winyanstaz]

2. One day...all the people of the world will have had enough.....

I feel that day is coming soon.