Shaheed El Hafed, November 2, 2011 (SPS) - Forty Sahrawi human rights defenders were "assaulted and beaten" by the Moroccan police late Monday afternoon at the airport of El Aaiun (occupied capital of Western Sahara), Sahrawi official source reported Tuesday.
From Algiers where they had participated in the second edition of the international conference in Algiers on "the right of peoples to resistance," the Sahrawi activists were "attacked by dozens of police armed with batons that insulted and offended them" for more than four hours, the source added.
After being dispossessed of all documents they had in their luggage, they were thrown outside the airport with their suitcases torn and their clothes scattered on the floor, the same source added.
Sahrawi activists had visited the Saharawi refugee camps where they attended the 35th anniversary of National Unity (October 12), and also visited Sahrawi liberated territories, it should be recalled.
This aggression against the Sahrawis comes after the muscular discharge against the Spanish European Parliamentary, Willy Meyer, who was assaulted the weekend upon descending the plane at the airport of Al Aaiun by the Moroccan police, accompanied by lawyer Jose Perez Ventura, Communist candidate to Parliament in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. He will be admitted to hospital for contusion after his return to Las Palmas.
A treatment that the Moroccan authorities had previously reserved for a number of Spanish and European colleagues who have been brutally repressed and prevented from leaving the plane on arrival in the occupied Sahrawi capital.
The latest, Rosa Diez, MP from left, was unceremoniously expelled from Al Aaiun where she had gone to inquire about the situation of human rights after the Moroccan military assault against the protest camp of Gdeim Izik in November 2010. (SPS)
062/TRA