Despite his civilian dress, there was no mistaking his role in the secret police when he reached into our Toyota to block the Nikon lens of my 17-year-old daughter Mariah. She was recording the beating of a woman by his colleagues, uniformed and not. Mariah's shutter was too fast for him, so he lunged further to snatch the camera, grazing her face. Mariah was fine. The woman was not.
A few hours later, Front Line Defenders director Mary Lawlor and Eric Sottas, Founder of the World Organization Against Torture, went to the local hospital, where they visited the bloodied and bruised victim, Soukaina Jed Ahlou, President of Sahrawi Women Forum.
As witnesses, we were not alone. A handful of women in multicolored melhfas (the traditional Sahrawi garb, 20 feet of printed fabric wrapped around the body head to toe) surrounded their sister protester as the police harangued them. We saw one local policeman in a blue uniform. Then there were the handful of thugs, identified to us by local human-rights leaders as members of the DST, Morocco's secret police. In addition, there were the two plainclothes informants who had been following us all day. When Mariah took their pictures, they tried to shield their faces. Two of the brutes planted themselves in front of the windows of our car, partially blocking our view of the beating. The third one cursed Mariah, called her an unprintable name, and blocked her camera with his hand.
RFK Human Rights Award laureate Aminatou Haidar recognized the DST thugs immediately. One of them, mustachioed and bald, was Al Hasoni Mohamed, the same man who accosted her 13-year-old son, threatening, "I will rape till you're paralyzed."
Known as "the Sahrawi Gandhi," Aminatou is one of Western Sahara's most prominent human-rights defenders. For over 20 years she has been involved in nonviolent resistance against Morocco's occupation of her homeland. Moroccan authorities have illegally detained her, imprisoned her, beaten her, tortured her, and threatened her with death. She once spent four and a half years in isolation, blindfolded. Despite the abuse by officials, she considers Moroccan citizens her "brothers" and courageously maintains her commitment to nonviolence as she advocates for the release of prisoners of conscience, seeks to strengthen local human-rights-monitoring mechanisms, and demands that the referendum that would allow the people of Western Sahara to vote on their future, agreed to by all parties over two decades ago, finally takes place.
The violence we witnessed was not an isolated incident. We met a dozen women whose sons and husbands were beaten and remain in prison for their nonviolent activism. We met with a group of men who showed us home videos of nonviolent demonstrators being kicked and beaten with nightsticks by uniformed police and their ununiformed colleagues. We met with a group of lawyers who said that since 1999 they have represented over 500 cases just like the one we witnessed today: nonviolent protesters bruised, bloodied, and, all too often, murdered -- and always, always accused of some crime. Across all those years the courts have acquitted only three Sahrawi victims.
The regional office of the Moroccan government claimed that Jed Ahlou was not beaten, that the entire incident was a mere show. It didn't look like a show to us. Her wounds and her swollen, discolored face looked all too real.
PHOTOS:
We are here for a week with a delegation from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights to assess the human-rights situation in both Western Sahara and the Algerian refugee camps where displaced Sahrawi live. We had a first glimpse on day one; seven days to go.
The Members of the RFK Center Delegation are Kerry Kennedy, President, Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights (USA); Mary Lawlor, Director, Front Line Defenders (Ireland); Margarette May Macaulay, Judge, Inter American Court; Judge (Jamaica); Marialina Marcucci, President, Robert F. Kennedy Center - Europe (Italy); Eric Sottas, former Secretary-General, World Organization Against Torture (Switzerland); María del Río, Board of Trustees, Fundación José Saramago (Spain); Santiago Canton, Director of the RFK Partners for Human Rights, Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights (Argentina); Marselha Gonçalves Margerin, Advocacy Director, Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights (Brazil); Stephanie Postar, Advocacy Assistant, Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights (USA); and Mariah Kennedy-Cuomo (USA).
We was think kerry kennedy have a heart of angel
but All regret she have the heart of evil and she hide it all world know how she did that
i was trying to Express my opinion On the issue related to my national unity who she biased clearly to the other side in this issue but she Prevented me from commenting
Although I do not go beyond the border in the commentary and i did respect everyone was there
so this it is the Democracy for her ? it is this Justice for her ?it is like this she respect the Human rights ? so we can trust her anymore ? i don't think so
it is shame
live usa and his honest people
for make me mad or make me lost my mind to be rude or something ?allow me to say you are wrong i am not like you think try with another way because i know who i am and i am not rude with people and all the people moroccan they are like this
you write this :A reminder that any comment -- supportive or not -- that contains vulgar, profane, abusive, or threatening language will be deleted.
so you And developed a specific law of framing the debate but you did not respect it because you deleted my comments Knowing that I was very careful to respect the your law in your page .
so can you tell me how you can respect any law and we knowing that you did not respect even your law .
what i did say just if you are Biased to the Polisario mercenaries this make you like the them lawyer and we too need another delegation who work in the The same field like yours will biased to our side and this make them like our lawyer then we will need judge who will be Neutral
what is shame in what i did wrote
can you tell me please ?
What is the quality of the relationship which has with some of the elements of the Polisario mercenaries?
What was the role of 17-year-old daughter?
Is not considered child labor exploitation?Ellis as the exploitation of children in violation of the law?
Why she did not any comment about the demonstrations that took place in Tindouf camps ?
Why did not publish White pictures of the Polisario mercenaries militia is the suppression of protesters?
Why she was not neutral between the conflicting parties?
Why she was show bias to the Polisario mercenaries?
Is her bias is a evidence of her hypocrisy and her lies ?
after her visit to the Moroccan sahara there many questions about her credibility and more of that ?
this is a little of that many questions
There is a French expression that says: "voir la paille dans l’œil du voisin et ne pas voir la poutre dans le sien" and another Arabic one which says : "the camel sees the humps on the back of all the other camels but not on its own back."
The Allaouit kings H2, and M6, with their French, and Spanish accomplices will not give up the riches of Western Sahara's fisheries, agricultural and phosphate.
What is sad is the poor and miserable citizens of Morocco who support the kings apartheid regime in Western Sahara but can't lift a finger against Spain for kicking them out of a rock island next their shores.
A seventeen year old trying to photograph, say, Tomkins Square cops beating people during that storied riot would have had more done to her than just the camera getting blocked by a hand.
It does not happen in the Western Sahara only. In the Rif (Northern Morocco), 5 people (one activist among them) were burnt alive and thrown in a bank to make it seem like they were steeling the bank. In less than 2 years dozens of Rifian human right and political change activists are arrested and heavily sentenced on made-up charges: Mohamed Jalloul, Halim Elbaqqali, Moustapha Bouhni, Chakir Elyahyaoui, Halim Ettalai, Mohamed Ahabbadh, Abdellah Afellah, Ahmed Elmoussaoui, Abdeladhim Benchaib, Abdelmajid Bouskout, Abdeljalil Bouskout.. and the list goes on. Kamal El Hassani was literally assassinated by a man working for the DST. The man stabbed Kamal in the back with a knife when he was standing with his fellow activists.
Her ignorance of the region's history and that of Algeria's military rulers is beyond belief. Can she really think that the sahrawis in the Tindouf camps in Algeria are free to go wherever they want after being kept there for 36 years? The Polisario has an army of 10.000 fighters armed to the teeth by Gaddafi and the Algerian military with sophisticated armement that surpasses many African states. Who provides the Polisario officials with diplomatic passports and pays for their representations and embassies abroad? How about their thousands of websites and travel worldwide to promote Algeria's 'humanitarian gestures'. Why have Algerian nationals not benefited from their country's wealth? If the Sahrawis in Algerian camps are refugees, why aren't they free to move around in Algeria and get jobs there?
The Algerian military have ruled Algeria with an iron first since indepence and have fleeced the country of its hydrocarbon wealth. Algerians demand human and basic rights. The right to elect people to represent them. The right to have decent housing. The right to have a job and the right to express their opinion about the disastrous policies. Ms Kennedy should look behind scenes and read about Moroccan-Algerian relations to understand present day politics of the region.
So careful are the authorities, that in a previous riot in Laayoune, a number of police officers, firefighters and medical personel were killed by the rioters and their corpses subjected to degrading treatments, while not one of the rioters was killed. (footage available on youtube).
Those police officers had standing orders not to fire and they sacrificed their life to carry that order. Again, I challenge you to name a single country where riot control personel would have showed as much restraint when subjected to that kind of assault
The article fails to explain both sides of the complex issue of autonomy and self-government in Morocco's Sahara region to the readers of the Huff Post.