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Western Sahara

WESTERN SAHARA: POLICE ROUND-UP CONTINUES, HRW DENOUNCES TORTURE

After the expulsion of almost all foreign activists and access barred to journalists, it is increasingly difficult to obtain any news from the Western Sahara, around ten days from the Moroccan army raid on a Saharawi camp set up in a peaceful protest a few kilometres from the main city of the former Spanish colony El Ayoun. Based on reports from sources close to the Saharawi, also last night dozens of people were arrested in police operations and loaded onto buses that headed north, into Moroccan territory. In the past days, like after the unrest that erupted in El Ayoun (and other locations according to some sources) following the raid against the camp, the police move house to house arresting an unknown number of people, though the Polisario Front (Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro) refers the arrest of over 2,000. The US Human Rights Watch group, among the few allowed access to gather information, reports the torture and mistreatment of the detained Saharawi. In a statement to the Spanish Cadena Ser Radio, Peter Bouckaert, correspondent of HRW in the Western Sahara, spoke of many Saharawi "beaten until unconscious", others left without food for days, some deprived of sleep by continuous water jets, men and women threatened of abuse, injured people denied access to hospitals where they risk being beaten by police on guard. According to local MISNA sources, the situation is apparently calm in El Ayoun, but the city is militarised and the Saharawi are forced to remain closed in their homes, intimidated and terrorised of violence. In occasion of Aid al-Adha, main Muslim festivity marked yesterday, the Saharawi didn't celebrate like other years, and the losses of many families were shared by the entire community.

[BO]