London, July 24, 2015 (SPS) - The President of Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, Ms. Kerry Kennedy, has published an article on the Guardian highlighting large-scale Moroccan human rights violations against the Saharawi people, focusing in particular on the case of Mohamed Lamine Haidala, who was assassinated by Moroccan settlers.
The U.S. activist underlined that Mohamed Lamine Haidala’s family insist their son “was yet another victim in a territory where the native Sahrawis are constantly subjected to abuses by Moroccan authorities or by Moroccan settlers who enjoy an environment of near-total impunity.”
Moroccan security forces sometimes use violent force to disrupt peaceful protests by Sahrawi people, said Ms. Kennedy in her article, adding that she witnessed police and uniformed security forces beat a Saharawi woman to the point of hospitalisation when she visited the territory in 2011.
For Kennedy, the reason for the continuation of impunity is that “there is no credible third party on the ground doing anything about the human rights abuses taking place there on a regular basis,” highlighting that the mandate for UN’s peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara, known as MINURSO, does not include human rights monitoring. (SPS)
090/089/TRA