quarta-feira, 31 de dezembro de 2008

Moroccan forces of occupation targets children in Western Sahara (report)


Sources of the Saharawi Journalists’ and Writers’ Union (UPES) in the occupied zones of Western Sahara and in the south of Morocco indicated that the Moroccan forces of occupation targets more and more Saharawi children and primary schools’ students, arresting them, torturing them and interrogating them with a lot of intimidating psychologically dangerous ways.

Last Sunday 21st December 2008, the Moroccan police arrested the 16 years old student Charaf Addin Mohamed Salem Dichkour. He was driven in a police car to a police station in the city where he was subjected to interrogation and torture “as it is the custom”, the same sources added.

In the next day, the family of the young student indicated to Saharawi human rights activists that he was released “and had obvious traces of torture on his body. The family had to take him to the hospital in the city. Doctors asserted that he has a fracture in the muscles of his left arm as a result to torture and to the ill-treatment he was subjected to in the police car”.

The boy also told the human rights activists that he spent the whole night without clothes on the bare and cold cell without bedding or blankets. He also said that his torturers undressed him to scare him of rape.

In the city of El Aaiun, another 16 years kid, Hassan Saad Buh, was arrested by the Moroccan police last Saturday 27 December 2008 after he got out of school.

Right after that, another student, Bazeid Lahmad, was arrested allegedly because the Moroccan police is accusing him of distributing leaflets that demand the decolonisation of Western Sahara!

Both kids were taken to the central police station in the occupied capital of Western Sahara, El Aaiun, as reported by the Saharawi Collective of Human Rights Defenders (CODESA).

In the occupied city of Smara, the kidnapping and torture of a 9 years old Saharawi girl, by a group of Moroccan police agents, cause a wide condemnation in the city.

The little girl said in a video that her kidnappers, which she is able to identify as she said, took her outside the city “in a place where there are many trees”, to beat her, interrogate her about some girls who participate to peaceful demonstrations apparently.

She said that her kidnappers insulted her with “bad words”, and probably threatened her of rape! To make her give them the names of demonstrators.

In the city of Tanta, in 10 December 2008, a group of Saharawi youngsters were arrested, including a minor, Bakar El Kentawi, after a violent intervention from the Moroccan police to disperse a peaceful demonstration of protest in front of the house of El Houssein Abd Sadek Lakteif (a young Saharawi student who was killed along with another student, Baba Khaya, by Moroccan authorities in Agadir during a sit-in organised in 1 December 2008).

According to human rights activists’ sources, the group of detainees was taken by the police to the stadium of the city where they were all beaten savagely, ill-treated and threatened of rape before they were released without any charges!

In 03 November 2008, the young Saharawi girl, Enguia Elhawassi, said she has been kidnapped by Moroccan police and interrogated under torture outside the occupied city of El Aaiun.

Enguia, it should be recalled, has been arrested more than 6 times since 2005 and her name and story has been reported in the latest report of Human Rights Watch on the human rights situation in Western Sahara.

Saharawi minor, Mohamed Saaidi, has been arrested on 03 September 2008 and transferred to the notorious Black Prison (Carcel Negra) in the occupied city of El Aaiun, where he has been imprisoned with adults.

Saaidi has been arrested during his participation in a peaceful demonstration in the neighbourhood of Al Aawda. Demonstrators only lift Saharawi flags and chant slogans asking for the independence of Western Sahara.

He was subjected to torture and interrogation during the period of his arrested and the police forced him to sign false confession to incriminate him.

In the same month in the occupied city of Smara, a police patrol arrested the Saharawi minor, Basiri Salah, in the neighbourhood of the neighbourhood Salam. He was subjected to violent interrogatory and tortured in the police station.

In May 2008, the Moroccan police in the occupied city of El Aaiun arrested many young Saharawis. Their number and names couldn’t be identified by the human rights activists, but they were able to notice that there was a young girl, minor, among the arrestee. This group was arrested after a student’s peaceful demonstration.

Once taken to the hospital Belmehdi in El Aaiun, the young girl, Fatma Laaziza Belkasmi, indicated that she was subjected to torture in the police station. She also said that all the arrestee were badly tortured by policemen, and by agents in civil clothes.

Worse, she asserted to the sources of UPES that few minutes after she was taken to the hospital, a nurse started torturing her to help some police agents interrogate her. She said that the nurse stabbed her with injections in sensitive parts of her body to make her talk, while the policemen stopped her parents outside the hospital for three hours.

In Mars 2008, concordant sources in El Aaiun told UPES that the Moroccan forces of occupation arrested and tortured dozens Saharawi citizens, after they violently dispersed a peaceful demonstrations asking for the independence of Western Sahara.

The same sources said that 10 children were among the group. The names of the kids are: Deich ould Mohamed Mbarek Masoud, Ayub Mohamed, Yassin, Mahmoud Beilal, Baba Ahmed Ndour, Sid Ahmed Garhi, Mohamed Atam, El Wali and Krikou, all of them are between 11 and 12, in addition to the 8 years old boy, Najem Burial.

In February 2008, the Moroccan police in the occupied El Aaiun arrested Abd El Hay El Kaskas (12 years old) and his younger brother Mohamed Bachir El Kaskas. They both were subjected to torture and intimidation before they were released.

In January 2008, the Moroccan police arrested two kids at least after they violently dispersed a peaceful demonstration in the occupied cities of Smara and Boujdour. Police was reported to have used excessive violence in the intervention causing many dangerous injured victims, including minors.

Source then indicated that the child, Ahmed Nahi, was taken by police outside the city of Boujdour. They tortured him and threatened to rape him to force him give the names of his friends.

In the same month, the Moroccan police sealed schools to scare the young students, intimidating them and insulting them after some slogans were written on the walls of some schools.

In this respect, the police arrested the student Mahmoud, took him to a police station and he was bashed and intimidated.

In January too, policemen arrested a minor in a cyber café, mainly Mahmoud Labeihi, because he was navigating on the net and visiting some Saharawi websites that demand the decolonisation of Western Sahara!

In brief, the Moroccan premeditated attacks against the Saharawi young generation and kids aims to intimidate them, push them to give up their studies and sometimes even to break their future for ever. In many cases the kid ends up with a serious physical of psychological handicap of injury that would be very hard to cure.


Sem comentários: