El Frente Polisario no cesa su furia contra activistas saharauis
The situation of the Sahrawi population is becoming increasingly alarming due to the continuous attacks and dishonours they are enduring from the Polisario Front. The dispute between the Algerian-backed Front and Morocco over the autonomy of Western Sahara is leading the local population into scenarios of marginalisation and exclusion. In fact, in many of the refugee camps, the minimum human rights standards required by the UN are not being met, due to the intrusions of the Front into people's lives.
The constant acts of the Polisario Front are provoking the actions of the Moroccan administration, which for years has prioritised the situation of Sahrawi citizens over the autonomy of the region, as the Alaouite executive considers the lives of the people more important than territorial decisions. Since 2019, ordinary citizens, journalists, activists, bloggers and influencers have faced all kinds of impediments to carry out their work and tasks, always under continuous repression, either by being threatened with exile or imprisonment in Western Sahara's prisons, such as Dhaibiya prison.
In the last few days, 24 young people, according to the opposition leader Mahmoud Zeidan, exiled in Spain, were arrested on 8 April in the coastal town of Dakhla, on the orders of the Polisario Front's Minister of the Interior, Meryem Salek H'Mada. The same source also revealed plans for other camps to "mobilise in support of the people living in Dakhla", as a sign of protest and unity against the actions of the Polisario Front.
The Forum of Support to the Autonomists of Tindouf (FORSATIN) reproached and blamed cartels, arms dealers and terrorist organisations in the region for carrying out abductions "in broad daylight". At the same time, the Algerian army and Polisario militias arrested more Saharawi activists on 6 April, as reported by FORSATIN, which did not provide exact figures of the number of those arrested.
Families, women and children have been disproportionately targeted by the gendarmerie since the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan. In protest, attackers not yet identified by the security forces set fire to the gendarmerie command post in the town of Dakhla on 1 April, located 200 kilometres from the Front's administrative headquarters in Rabouni. The incident, as made public by the FORSATIN support formation, was a response to the ill-treatment and torture of Saharawis in the Dakhla camp by the officers.
According to supporters of the Polisario Front, who try to hide the participation of the leadership of the Front of Political Responsibility in the last round of arrests, the general prosecutor "would not have given permission" to carry out all these interpellations in Dakhla camp.
The same "prosecutor general" who abstained on the complaints filed by the three bloggers Mahmoud Zeidan, Moulay Abba Bouzeid and Fadel Breika, detained without charge for several months in 2019 by units of the Polisario Front, the armed wing of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), for making public acts of corruption in the Polisario leadership. These alleged acts perpetrated by the detainees were, in the eyes of the Front, "treason against the nation, acts of aggression against the Sahrawi state and sedition".
