KERRY KENNEDY URGES MOROCCO: ALLOW RETURN OF ILLEGALLY EXPELLED SAHARAWI RIGHTS DEFENDER, AMINATOU HAIDAR

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jeffrey Buchanan
(202) 257-9048
buchanan@rfkmemorial.org

Washington, DC November 24th, 2009-- Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and founder of the RFK Center for Human Rights (RFK Center) demanded Morocco immediately allow expelled Saharawi human rights defender Aminatou Haidar to return safely home to Western Sahara.

“Nine days ago, the government of Morocco forcibly removed [Haidar] from her homeland of Western Sahara. Morocco must stop violating her right to return home and reinstate Aminatou’s current passport and allow her to go back to Western Sahara,” Kennedy said.

RFK Center is urging Morocco to comply with its obligation under international law and permit 2008 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Laureate Aminatou Haidar to safely return to Western Sahara.  Haidar has been in the Canary Islands since November 14, when she was expelled by Moroccan authorities who forced her to board a plane destined for Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. Haidar has remained at Lanzarote Airport since her arrival. She began a hunger strike on November 16th to demand her lawful return. 

“Moroccan authorities told her that unless she denies she is a citizen of Western Sahara, she will never be allowed to go home,” Kennedy explained. “She is now on day eight of a hunger strike, and her health is in serious danger.”

International law guarantees the right of every person to freedom of movement and travel.  In particular, Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides that no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.  Morocco has ratified the ICCPR.  RFK Center questions the arbitrary and political nature of Haidar’s expulsion from Western Sahara, believing Morocco is in violation of its obligation under international law.

Haidar was denied entry into Moroccan-occupied territory of Western Sahara after refusing to accept Moroccan as her nationality. Haidar, a Saharawi human rights defender who supports the right of the Saharawi people of Western Sahara to self-determination, including a referendum on the territory’s political future, declared Western Sahara as her place of residence on the immigration entry form she completed prior to disembarkation at the airport in El Aiun, on November 13th.  

“This is how I have always filled out the form”, Haidar explained, “without any problems”.  But this time around, she said, a Moroccan officer stopped her at the entry of the airport in  El Aiun even before she reached the customs desk and asked for her travel documents.  The officer took her Moroccan passport from her and queried her about writing Western Sahara instead of Morocco on the immigration entry form. Haidar was then detained overnight at the airport where Moroccan authorities interrogated her for almost 13 hours until the early hours of the next day, in the presence of several Moroccan officers, including the Prosecutor of El Aiun. 

During this interrogation process, Haidar said she was questioned on issues ranging from her position on the Western Sahara conflict to the source of funding for her trips abroad.  She was asked to change the immigration form she had filled out but she refused, and when asked whether she recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, she insisted that a referendum would determine that.  The product of the interrogation was a four-page document, which Haidar signed after it was presented to her for signature.  It is this document which Moroccan authorities are claiming Haidar signed renouncing her citizenship. 

Haidar believes her expulsion was planned long before her arrival on November 13th.  The ticket confirmation and boarding pass for Canarias Aeronautica flight no. 115, which she boarded to the Canary Islands, bears an original date of travel November 21st in print, but that date appears to have been changed by hand to November 14th the actual date of her expulsion. The list of passengers for the flight on November 21st also contains Haidar’s name, misspelled “Haydar.”

Haidar is renowned for her use of non-violent means to organize peaceful demonstrations in support of a referendum on Western Sahara’s political future, first agreed to by Morocco, the Polisario Front, the group leading negotiations on behalf of the Saharawis, and the United Nations in 1988. Nonviolent protests calling for the protection of the human rights of the Saharawi people are usually met with resistance by Moroccan authorities. Moroccan officials have been known to paint human rights defenders as militants, often using the pretext of criminal conduct to punish nonviolent advocacy, including harsh sentencing. Years before her expulsion, Haidar herself had been “disappeared” and tortured by Moroccan authorities for her democratic efforts mobilizing Saharawis to speak out for their rights.

Haidar’s expulsion comes at the heels of an unprecedented public statement made by King Mohamed VI of Morocco on November 6th, the anniversary of the Green March when Morocco took control of Western Sahara.  King Mohamed announced a tougher stance on Saharawi activists supporting a referendum saying, “Now is the time for clear, unambiguous stances, and for responsible conduct. One is either a patriot or a traitor. There is no halfway house. One cannot enjoy the rights and privileges of citizenship, only to abuse them and conspire with the enemies of the homeland.”

There have been several recent reports of actions taken by the Moroccan government restricting the rights of the Sahrawi people to travel freely.  On October 6, Moroccan police prevented five Sahrawi activists from traveling to Mauritania and confiscated their passports.  Morocco provided no official reason for its action against the activists.  On October 8, Morocco arrested seven Sahrawi civilian activists who had visited Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria, accused them of meeting with persons opposing Morocco, and referred the case to a military court.   

RFK Center and other non-governmental organizations have for long been calling for the establishment of a system administered by the UN to monitor human rights in Western Sahara.  The UN has a peacekeeping mission, the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), based in Western Sahara.  However, MINURSO does not have the authority to protect human rights, and it is the only contemporary peace-keeping mission without a human rights mandate.  RFK Center believes that the existence of a human rights monitoring system in Western Sahara and in the camps in Tindouf, Algeria will help to protect the human rights of the Saharawi people and create respect for human rights in the region.

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