BBC-News, 8 dicembre 2009
Sahara Occidentale: L’attivista Saharawi continua lo sciopero della fame e rifiuta le cure mediche
By Sarah Rainsford - BBC News, Madrid
Un’attivista per l’indipendenza del Sahara Occidentale, dopo tre settimane di sciopero della fame in Spagna, ha annunciato la sua scelta di non accettare alcuna cura da parte dei medici.
Dal giorno in cui è stata espulsa verso le isole canarie dalle autorità marocchine, Aminatou Haidar sta conducendo uno sciopero della fame.
Il Marocco ha impedito all’attivista di entrare in Sahara Occidentale, regione da tempo oggetto di contesa. Contemporaneamente, le autorità marocchine hanno anche sequestrato il suo passaporto, nel momento in cui Aminatou –durante la compilazione di alcuni documenti- si è rifiutata di definirsi marocchina.
La protesta di Haidar ha ricevuto il supporto di molti cittadini spagnoli autorevoli, tra cui l’attore Javier Bardem ed il regista Pedro Almodovar.
Una visita terrificante
Per 22 giorni Aminatou Haidar ha rifiutato il cibo, limitandosi a bere soltanto acqua addolcita. Al momento si trova ancora all’aeroporto di Lanzarote, da dove continua a ripetere che non mangerà niente, fino al momento in cui le autorità marocchine non la lasceranno tornare a casa.
Nel frattempo, ha aumentato la pressione sul governo spagnolo affinché si impegni a risolvere la sua situazione, sostenendo che non accetterà più nemmeno cure mediche.
Tale decisione arriva subito una visita da parte di avvocati e medici spagnoli, visita che la stessa Aminatou ha definito terrificante. Difatti, secondo le affermazioni dell’attivista, gli spagnoli, piuttosto che fare pressioni sul Marocco per consentirle di tornare a casa, sono giunti all’aeroporto di Lanzarote per verificare la possibilità di nutrirla in modo forzato.
Il primo ministro spagnolo continua a sostenere che il suo governo sta facendo tutti gli sforzi per raggiungere una soluzione.
Lunedì scorso il ministro marocchino degli esteri ha accusato Aminatou di portare avanti un ricatto politico, sostenendo che la stessa stava aiutando il Fronte Polisario, con cui il Marocco ha combattuto una guerra fino agli anni 90.
Dall’altra parte, Aminatou Haidar nega la veridicità di tale affermazione.
Va ricordato che l’attivista ha vinto diversi premi come attivista per la pace e tutto quello che vuole in questo momento è tornare a casa.
Tuttavia la salute di Aminatou va peggiorando, nel momento in cui né le autorità Marocchine né Aminatou stanno mostrando alcuna volontà nel raggiungere un compromesso.
GUARDIAN, 06/12/09
Morocco: Deal for hunger striker's return is delayed
Spain's deputy prime minister, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, has said it is in negotiations with Morocco over the return of a prominent Western Sahara independence activist who has been on hunger strike for 20 days.
Aminatou Haidar has been camped at Lanzarote airport since 14 November, when Morocco stripped her of her passport and flew her out after she refused to acknowledge Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony. Late on Friday an agreement appeared to have been reached and the 43-year-old boarded a jet to return, but Morocco denied it landing rights minutes before take-off, her lawyer said.
Last night Morocco stated that Haidar will not be allowed back unless she makes a formal apology to the king.
2/12/09
As she enters the third week of her hunger strike, Nobel peace prize nominee Aminatou Haidar is in a critical condition. Yesterday a cross-party group of MPs tabled a motion expressing dismay at her expulsion from Western Sahara. Her deportation has been condemned by Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, as well as supporters around the world. Last week the US state department called for "a speedy determination of her legal status and full respect for due process and human rights". Although barely able to speak, Haidar has vowed to continue her hunger strike as part of the struggle of the entire Saharawi people. "It is about the collective right denied to the Saharawi people to live freely in their native land," she said. The Moroccan government should return her passport immediately and allow her to travel home to her country and to her two young children before it is too late.
Jeremy Corbyn MP Chair, all-party parliamentary group on Western Sahara, David Drew MP, Peter Bottomley MP, John Austin MP, Paul Flynn MP, Ken Loach, Terry Jones , Stefan Simanowitz Free Western Sahara Network, Mark Leutchford Western Sahara Campaign UK, Y Lamine Baali Polisario Front, Danielle Smith Sandblast, Giles Foreman Director, Caravanserai
29/11/2009
Fears grow for hunger strike Nobel nominee
Supporters including Pedro Almodóvar are demanding justice for Western Sahara activist Aminatou Haidar, who was deported by Morocco
Award-winning Western Sahara activist Aminatou Haidar at Arrecife airport on the Spanish Canary Island of Lanzarote. Photograph: Desiree Martin/AFP/Getty Images
They call Aminatou Haidar the Gandhi of the Western Sahara. And the latest unlikely backdrop to her struggle for the independence of her forgotten desert homeland is a check-in hall full of sun-burned tourists at Arrecife airport on the Canary island of Lanzarote.
Haidar went on hunger strike 12 days ago after being expelled from her home and having her passport taken away by Morocco, which annexed the former Spanish colony in 1976.
Her alleged crime was, that on returning from New York after picking up the Train Foundation civil courage award, she refused to fill in the citizenship line on her customs form and wrote "Western Sahara" on the address line.
Moroccan officials told her that the disputed Western Sahara, where she and some 100,000 fellow Sahrawis live, does not exist, claiming it is part of Morocco. After her passport was taken away, she was placed on a plane to Spain.
Haidar's health continued to deteriorate yesterday amid growing worldwide concern, with Barack Obama's administration and Amnesty International both expressing concern. "She is a very strong, very special woman, but she is weak because she has not eaten for 12 days," explained Jordi Ferrer, a Spanish friend and documentary film-maker who was with her yesterday. "She has an ulcer and the doctors say things will get a lot worse if she carries on next week."
Haidar, a former Nobel peace prize nominee, was held for four years without charge in secret Moroccan jails, where she said she was tortured. She was also beaten by police for taking part in peaceful pro-independence demonstrations.
Morocco's ambassador in Spain, Omar Azziman, accused Haidar of behaving like a militant from Polisario, the Sahrawi rebel movement seeking independence for Western Sahara. "Why should the Moroccan government seek a solution for a woman who denies that she is Moroccan?" he asked.
But her hunger strike has won support from Spanish celebrities such as film director Pedro Almodóvar, Nobel laureate José Saramago and from the powerful Kennedy family in the United States. Today, Almodóvar and hundreds of Spanish artists, intellectuals and leftwing politicians are due to hold a protest meeting in Madrid.
Pressure is also, increasingly, coming from Washington. "The United States remains concerned about the health and wellbeing of Sahrawi activist Aminatou Haidar," state department spokesman Ian Kelly said.
"We urge a speedy determination of her legal status and full respect for due process and human rights."
John Train, the wealthy patron of the civil courage prize that Haidar was awarded in New York, said: "She is one of many brave people all around the world who resist intimidation, ostracism and pressure, and risk their lives, to promote freedom and justice."
Yesterday, the slight, bespectacled 42-year-old was lying on a carpet and some cushions in the airport check-in hall. She has trouble standing up and sometimes uses a wheelchair or stretcher bed. Airlines have refused to carry her to a disputed territory without a passport. She said her hunger strike was a protest against her expulsion and Spain's decision to let her in without a passport – which she claimed broke both Spanish and international law. She said the airline that took her to Lanzarote should have been told to take her straight home. As a result, she was a prisoner in Spain. "I am a human rights activist who only protests by peaceful means," she said yesterday. "Either the Spanish government finds a way to get me home, or I will carry on until I die.
"I never thought the Spanish government would play such a dirty role. I'll never accept asylum. My homeland is the Western Sahara, even though it is illegally occupied by Morocco. That is where my fight is." Spain's state-run airports authority has tried to evict her, claiming she is a public nuisance.
"They have violated their own internal laws by accepting her here without a passport," said Marselha Gonçalves Margerin, advocacy director at the Washington-based Robert F Kennedy Centre, who was in Lanzarote yesterday. "Just as they allowed her to get in, so they should now allow her to get back."
Deputy Spanish prime minister María Teresa Fernández de la Vega said Spain supported self-determination in the Western Sahara, but begged Haidar to "reconsider" her protest.
She promised that Haidar, who turned down an offer of political asylum, could soon "travel freely and be reunited with her family".
17/11/2009
Western Sahara activist on hunger strike at Lanzarote airport
Aminatou Haidar, campaigner for indigenous Sahrawi rights, expelled over refusal to accept Moroccan nationality
Western Sahara activist Aminatou Haidar in Arrecife airport on Lanzarote. Photograph: DESIREE MARTIN/AFP/Getty Images
Western Sahara's most prominent human rights activist has gone on hunger strike at a Spanish airport after being expelled from her home country by Moroccan authorities.
Aminatou Haidar, who is viewed by her supporters as the "Sahrawi Gandhi", was deported to Lanzarote from the disputed territory of Western Sahara on Saturday. Morocco has occupied the former Spanish colony since 1975, refusing a say on independence to the indigenous Sahrawi population, including some 100,000 people still living in refugee camps in the desert in south-western Algeria.
Haidar, a 42-year-old single mother, was detained at the airport in Western Sahara's administrative capital, Laayoune, on her return from the US, where she was awarded the Train Foundation's Civil Courage prize of $50,000 for her struggle for the Sahrawis' right to self-determination. After refusing to declare her nationality as Moroccan on the airport arrival form, the police confiscated her passport and she was flown to the nearby Canary Islands.
Haidar told the Guardian by telephone that Spain was "complicit" in her predicament, both for admitting her to Lanzarote and then refusing to let her leave.
"I will carry on my hunger strike until the Spanish government accepts its responsibilities and allows me to return to my homeland, where my children live … or I die," she said.
Prison in Western Sahara was preferable to detention in Spain, she added.
Haidar has wide experience of incarceration. In 1987, aged 20, she was "disappeared" and tortured by the Moroccan secret police for more than three years for advocating independence. In 2005 she was jailed for seven months after being beaten by a Moroccan policeman during a demonstration protesting against the Moroccan occupation.
The Spanish foreign ministry said could not allow Haidar to return to Laayoune because she had no passport. The Moroccan government, which considers Western Sahara to be its southern provinces, even though this has no foundation in international law or formal recognition from any other country, has denied any wrongdoing. Instead, it has accused Haidar of treason and of being agent of the Polisario Front, a Sahrawi nationalist movement that fought a 16-year desert war against Morocco with backing from Algeria.
The conflict ended in 1991, with both parties agreeing to a UN-sponsored referendum on self-determination – including an option for independence – for the Sahrawi people. But Morocco has consistently blocked the vote, and the Polisario remains in exile in Algeria, behind a massive sand wall manned by tens of thousands of Moroccan soldiers.
In recent years King Mohammed VI has said independence is no longer on the table, with autonomy now the best available option for Sahrawis. On 6 November, in a speech marking 34 years of Moroccan presence in Western Sahara, he hinted at harsher action towards anyone still questioning the claim of sovereignty.
"One is either a patriot, or a traitor," he said. "Is there a country that would tolerate a handful of lawless people exploiting democracy and human rights in order to conspire with the enemy against its sovereignty, unity and vital interests?"
The expulsion of Haidar, who was also awarded the 2008 Robert F Kennedy human rights prize for her struggle, is part of a wider crackdown on Sahrawi activists. On Monday Human Rights Watch condemned the Moroccan government for blocking "unauthorised" visits by foreigners to the homes of Sahrawi campaigners in Western Sahara. Seven other Sahrawi activists being held by Morocco after visiting the Polisario camps in October have been described as prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International.
NY TIMES
Saharan Hunger - Striker Refuses Spanish Passport
29/11/ 2009
MADRID (Reuters) - A West Saharan activist on hunger strike at a Spanish airport has rejected the country's offer of a Spanish passport in a bid to help her return home, the activist's lawyer said Sunday.
Aminatou Haidar has been at Lanzarote airport in the Canary Islands refusing food for two weeks, ever since she was expelled from her desert homeland by Moroccan authorities who say she refused to sign a paper saying she was a Moroccan citizen.
Surviving on sugared water, Haidar's deteriorating condition has become an embarrassment for the Spanish government which has tried to find ways to get her to eat again and also to allow her to return home.
Haidar, who has campaigned for independence of Western Sahara from Morocco, cannot travel because Moroccan authorities took her passport away from her before putting her on a flight to Spain.
Spain's latest attempt to find a solution ended in failure Sunday, when a senior Foreign Ministry official failed to convince her to accept a Spanish passport and travel back.
"She doesn't want to be a foreigner in her own country," Haidar's Spanish lawyer, Ines Miranda, told reporters at Lanzarote airport, according to newspaper El Pais.
Haidar is angry with Spain, which she says collaborated with Morocco by accepting her after she was expelled from the Western Sahara. She wants her old Moroccan passport returned but refuses to ask Moroccan authorities for a new one.
Her cause has been adopted by celebrities including film director Pedro Almodovar and actor Javier Bardem, who have called on Spain's Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to find a way for her to go home.
Morocco took control of most of the Western Sahara in 1975 after Spain withdrew from the desert territory.
Sahara Activist Reported Weak From Hunger Strike
28/11/2009
MADRID (AP) -- An award-winning Western Sahara independence activist who has been on a nearly two-week hunger strike since Morocco expelled her from the disputed territory is so weak she can hardly stand or speak, supporters said Saturday.
The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights expressed grave concern over the health of Aminatou Haidar, 42, who wants to return to the Western Sahara, the former Spanish colony where she lives with her husband and two teenage children.
Haidar is also furious with Spain for not helping her go back home, her lawyer said.
The RFK center, based in Washington D.C., gave Haidar a human rights award in 2008 for her work in advocating self-determination for the Sahrawi people of the Western Sahara, which Morocco annexed after the Spanish pulled out in 1975, and for denouncing human rights abuses by the Moroccan government. The center says she is commonly referred to as the ''Sahrawi Gandhi.''
Haidar has been camped out at an airport in Lanzarote in Spain's Canary Islands after being sent there from the Western Sahara -- against her will, according to Haidar. She had arrived in the disputed territory Nov. 14 via Spain after a trip to the United States to receive another human rights award, this time in New York.
RFK center representative Marselha Goncalves Margerin says Morocco expelled her to Lanzarote and kept her passport after she refused to acknowledge Moroccan sovereignty over the territory. Haidar launched her hunger strike after arriving in Spain, and since then has ingested only water with sugar.
''She is very weak today. People who have been here with her for the past 13 days said that she it is the worst that they have seen her,'' Goncalves Margerin said. ''She looks really, really frail.''
The Spanish government said this week it cannot allow Haidar to fly back to the Western Sahara without a passport. In a statement, the Foreign Ministry it said it has offered her refugee status. But that would mean she could not go back home.
Haidar believes the Spanish government is acting in connivance with Morocco, saying it makes no sense that Spain let her into this country without a passport but refuses to let her leave again on grounds she lacks one, Goncalves Margerin told the AP from Lanzarote.
Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos telephoned Haidar Saturday, expressing admiration for her, worry over her physical condition and hope that her situation can be resolved soon, said Haidar's lawyer, Ines Miranda.
Haidar responded by saying she was indignant over how Spain had treated her and the fact that no one from the Spanish government has gone to see her ''in the spot where Spain and Morocco have put her and she is sleeping in the street,'' Miranda told the AP.
Foreign ministry officials could not be reached for comment Saturday.
Miranda said the activist has not personally received any offer from the government on how to resolve her problem. ''She never thought the Spanish government would treat her this way,'' Miranda said.
''But I can tell you that her head is clear and she knows perfectly well what she wants and what she is doing,'' Miranda said.
MIRROR
Western Sahara's heroine arrested
Nov 16,
Like Aung San Suu Kyi, Aminatou Haidar has devoted her life to freeing her compatriots from a generation of alleged oppression.
She too has been imprisoned several times for speaking out against the occupying Moroccan forces in Western Sahara, and she has also been recognised by the Western world for her super-human efforts.
A few days ago she was arrested again. This time it was as she arrived in Laayoune, the main city in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara, on a flight from the Canary Islands.
Witnesses reported how she was taken away by police officers who had sealed the airport despite being accompanied by two Spanish journalists.
Aminatou was later deported to Lanzarote, with her passport confiscated. Morocco, however, claims she refused to comply with "airport formalities".
Mother-of-two Aminatou, 42, spent seven months in the so-called "black prison" of Laayoune in late 2005. She was undeterred.
At the time Amnesty International rebuked the Moroccan government for her arrest.
But despite the hardships, she continues to campaign for the liberation of a country divided in two by millions of landmines and cluster bombs laid by the occupying military.
Last year she was awarded the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Award, and she has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
THE INDEPENDENT
2/12/2009
Marooned at Lanzarote airport, the 'Gandhi of the Western Sahara'
Expelled from her homeland and weak from a hunger strike, the last thing award-winning Sahrawi independence activist Aminatou Haidar needs right now is a €180 fine.
But that's what a Spanish court has ordered her to pay for disturbing the peace at the Lanzarote airport in the Canary Islands, where the woman known as the Gandhi of the Western Sahara has camped since 16 November, refusing to eat anything but sugar water in protest at what she sees as her forced exile by Morocco.
The court fine came after Aena, the company that runs the airport, filed a complaint in a local Arrecife court, which on Monday issued a "minimal" €180 (£160) fine on the weakening activist. It is the latest twist to the surreal tale of how this Nobel Prize nominee wound up on a check-in terminal floor surrounded by sun-seeking tourists, her passport rescinded by Moroccan authorities.
Her Kafkaesque plight – which began when Ms Haidar refused to fill in the citizenship line of a customs form – has spurred an outpouring of support by Spanish artists and intellectuals such as film director Pedro Almodovar. They staged a concert outside Madrid at the weekend to pressure the Spanish government into doing more to help Ms Haidar return home.
"If I held a government post, I would be with her today," Almodovar told the crowd. "I would tell her that to preserve her dignity she doesn't have to die."
Portuguese Nobel laureate Jose Saramago was expected to visit her at the airport yesterday. A representative from the Robert F Kennedy Centre for Justice and Human Rights in Washington, Marselha Goncalves Margerin, is also by her side. The RFK Centre awarded her its 2008 prize, for denouncing human rights abuses by the Moroccan government.
"I think Morocco miscalculated about the amount of support she has all over the world," Ms Goncalves Margerin told The Independent as Ms Haidar began her 16th day of hunger strike. Ms Haidar's health continues to deteriorate – she can only move in a stretcher or wheelchair – as the Spanish foreign ministry searches for a solution. She fainted during negotiations at the weekend.
But so far she has rejected offers of Spanish nationality, as well as political asylum in Spain. They are unacceptable, according to her lawyer, Ines Miranda, because they would make her "a foreigner in her own land".
Spain's Foreign Minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, announced on Monday that she seemed happy with a new plan: the return of her original passport, which he is negotiating with Morocco.
The 42-year-old activist has devoted her life to the peaceful quest for independence of her mineral-rich desert homeland, a former Spanish colony now controlled by Morocco. She has been tortured and imprisoned in secret Moroccan jails. It took her 15 years for the authorities to grant her a passport.
Last month, she used that passport to travel to the United States, where she received an award from the Train Foundation in New York for her struggles. Then on 14 November she tried to return home to her husband and two teenage daughters in the Western Sahara's main town, Laayoune.
But before she reached the customs desk at Laayoune airport, a Moroccan officer questioned her about why she had left the citizenship line blank on her immigration entry form. Why had she written Western Sahara instead of Morocco in the address line? Her answer did not please authorities, and her passport was confiscated. She was told to sign a form renouncing her citizenship and was forced onto a plane. To where, she did not know.
Once in Lanzarote, she asked the Spanish authorities to be allowed to return to the Western Sahara. But they would not let her board a plane without a passport. According to Ms Goncalves Margerin, Ms Haidar believes Morocco planned her expulsion long before she left for the US, as part of a crackdown against Sahrawis who support the Polisario Front.
Ms Haidar also believes that Spain knew of the Moroccan plan in advance and agreed to offer the activist Spanish nationality. She already possesses a Spanish residency card.
"When she was in the US, she said: 'I expected two things to happen; either they will arrest me or they will take away my travel documents.' But she never thought they would expel her," Ms Goncalves Margerin said. "What is heartbreaking is that Spain agreed to accept her."
BBC NEWS
8/12/2009
Western Sahara hunger striker refuses medical care
By Sarah Rainsford
BBC News, Madrid
Aminatou Haidar has been fasting at Lanzarote Airport since she was expelled to Spain's Canary Islands by the Moroccan authorities.
They denied the activist entry to Western Sahara - a disputed region.
Morocco also confiscated her passport when she refused to define herself as Moroccan on an official form.
Ms Haidar's protest at her treatment has won the support of many prominent Spaniards including actor Javier Bardem and film director Pedro Almodovar - giving it a high profile.
'Terrifying' visit
For 22 days now, Aminetu Haidar has refused all food and drunk only sweetened water.
Camped out at Lanzarote Airport, she has said time and again that she will not eat anything, until the Moroccan authorities allow her back to her home.
Now she has increased the pressure on the Spanish government to resolve her situation, declaring that she will not accept any more medical help at all.
That decision follows what Ms Haidar calls a "terrifying" visit by a team of Spanish lawyers and medics on Sunday.
The hunger-striker says they came to assess the possibility of force-feeding her, instead of forcing Morocco to allow her home.
Spain's prime minister insists his government is doing everything possible to reach a solution.
On Monday, Morocco's foreign minister accused the campaigner of political blackmail, saying she was acting for the separatist Polisario Front that fought a war with Morocco over Western Sahara until the 1990s.
Ms Haidar denies that.
She has won several awards as a peace activist, and says all she wants is the right to go home.
But even as Aminatu Haidar's health weakens, neither she nor the Moroccan authorities are showing any sign of compromise.
2/12/2009
Morocco demands apology from hunger strike activist
A senior Moroccan official has said a Western Sahara activist refused re-entry to Morocco must apologise before her passport is returned.
Aminatou Haidar has been on hunger strike at Lanzarote airport, in Spain's Canary Islands, since being blocked from entering Morocco on 15 November.
She has been nicknamed the "Gandhi of Sahara" after seeking independence for a disputed region of Western Sahara.
Morocco controls the Western Sahara but many there want self-determination.
Moroccan officials confiscated Ms Haidar's passport when, on returning from Lanzarote after collecting a prize, she refused to state her citizenship as Moroccan.
'Weak condition'
Abderraham Leibek said Ms Haidar voluntarily handed over her passport and would be pardoned - and a new passport provided - if she apologised.
"When a Moroccan carries out an act of treason against her homeland, the only way in which Morocco - the Moroccan government - will pardon her is if she apologises," he said in comments on Spanish television.
Ms Haidar completed her 17th day of hunger strike on Wednesday. She has been surviving on sweetened water.
She has vowed to carry on refusing food and has said she is prepared to die if she cannot return home.
She refused an offer of Spanish nationality offered to her on Saturday in an attempt to end the deadlock.
Instead, Ms Haidar, who is camped outside Lanzarote airport, has demanded her original passport back and refuses to ask for another one.
Supporters say Ms Haidar, who won the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Award last year, is in a weak condition.
Morocco annexed Western Sahara in 1975 after Spain withdrew from the territory.