Madrid (Spain) 11 June 2020 (SPS)- Saharawi human rights activists and Alternative Nobel Prize Laureate, Ms. Aminatou Haidar, called on the Spanish government to put an end to the severe hemorrhagic loss of its dignity and its total submission in front of the Moroccan regime of occupation, in an article she published yesterday in Spanish media outlet, “Lamarea.com”.
The article was published on the 50th anniversary of the forced disappearance of Saharawi political leader, Mohamed Sidi Brahim Basiri, and marks the adherence by Aminatou to a large campaign launched by Spanish civil society organizations and imminent personalities, to call on the Spanish Government to unveil the truth about the fate of Basiri and what Spain committed against Saharawis during the crackdown against Saharawi Intifada of 1970.
Following is a translation of the article, originally in Spanish and Arabic:
The disappearance of Basiri and the hemorrhagic loss of dignity by the Spanish “democracy”
By: Aminatou Haidar
History will never erase the shame of the Spanish government for its historical and shameful treason to the people of the then “Spanish” Sahara, actually Saharawi Republic/Western Sahara, no matter how hard Spanish political elite will try to cover the Sun of truth with the sieve of disgraceful positions.
The Spanish government can neither attribute this treason to a specific political party or tendency than another from those parties that ruled the country since Spain assumed its responsibilities in the colonization and administration of Western Sahara in 1965 and after it annexed the country as its 53rd province.
Later, Spain would deny all this in an endless series of betrayals such as the crime against humanity committed by the Spanish authorities against the Sahrawi peaceful protesters of the “Zemla” Intifada, the disappearance of the leader of the Saharawi national movement at the time, Mohamed Sidi Brahim Bassiri; the secret signature of a treacherous tripartite agreement to divide Western Sahara in two and abandoning the Saharawi people preventing them from enjoying their right to decolonization and self-determination like the rest of African countries; the abandon of thousands of Saharawi civilians and their exposure to the bombardment with napalm and white phosphorous, persecution and annihilation by the ally of Madrid, the Moroccan regime of occupation.
After all this, the successive Spanish “democratic” governments engaged into an unstoppable sequence of treasons, inaugurated by the socialist Felipe de González, who strangely and aberrantly laid face down before the Moroccan monarchical regime and ended up being one of its best itinerant ambassadors in Latin America and other countries, where he spread the Moroccan Kingdom’s disinformation against Polisario Front.
Unfortunately, González’s attitude was adopted and followed by the successive governments of Spain, left or right. An attitude into which, like him, countless Spanish politicians fell, who, if we wanted to transcribe their names, would need a large number of pages here. Only the peoples of Spain were faithful to history and at no time did they stop supporting their brothers and sisters from the resistant Saharawi people. Only the peoples of Spain fulfilled their responsibilities towards the Saharawi people and continue to resist by their side.
Today, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the disappearance of Mohamed Sidi Brahim Bassiri, we want everyone to know through the “What became of Bassiri?” campaign that we do not forget our disappeared and that we will not stop blaming the Spanish State – and all its institutions – for Bassiri’s disappearance, knowing that Bassiri’s only crime was believing in the right of his people to freedom and aspiring to achieve it peacefully. He raised weapons against no one; he killed no one and harmed no one.
Today, as a Saharawi militant and former victim of forced disappearance who suffered repression and terrible torture in the Moroccan secret detention camps, I personally join this commendable initiative to tell the Spanish State that I hold on to all my rights, those same rights that the Spanish Government treacherously wanted to deny me on many occasions. First, it denied me my right to liberty and decolonization in 1975. Then continued denying me my right to self-determination through its complicity and support to the Moroccan occupation, and now, it persists denying me, as a Saharawi, my right to the truth, the whole truth, and continues to persist in its complicity with the Makhzen.
From here, I demand that the whole truth of what happened in the events of the Zemla Intifada of 1970 be fully disclosed and that the responsibilities of the Spanish institutions and those responsible for crimes against humanity and murders of the Saharawi victims at that time, of which we know nothing today, be fully determined. I also demand truth, reparation and justice for all victims of forced disappearance, as is the case with Bassiri.
And from here, I invite the Spanish “democracy” to stop the hemorrhagic loss of its dignity, to assume its responsibilities under international law and to stop unnecessarily laying face down before the Moroccan regime of occupation, because we will never forget, we will not forgive and we will never stop resisting.
Aminatou Haidar
Saharawi Human Rights Defender
Laureate of Alternative Nobel Price 2019.» (SPS)
090/500/60 (SPS)