Years are elapsing and time is going by, but no changes are happening for the Sahrawi population living in the Tindouf camps. It is a stalemate, a no peace no war situation, especially after the cease-fire of 1991.
Since the beginning of the dispute, the Algerian regime kept violating human rights in the Tindouf camps and torturing all opponents and dissidents of Algeria-backed polisario leaders.
M’rabih Ahmed Mahmoud is one of those Sahrawis who escaped the merciless grip of the polisario. He told his story to BarlamanToday, a story that is not an exception or an anecdote, a story of systematic human rights abuse.
According to M’rabih, his first opposition to the polisario was through the establishment of a reform movement called “March 5”. The movement stemmed from the 2011 Arab Spring and was calling for social and economic changes.
The movement was rapidly taken over by Algeria’s Intelligence and the polisario leaders who diverted the movement, using the “carrot and stick” policy and depriving the inhabitants of IDs.
M’rabih clashed with several polisario members because he believed that Algeria is using the population for its own interests. Since that moment, as per M’rabih’s words, he was on the polisario’s radar.
2013 was the year when M’rabih Ahmed Mahmoud was beaten and arrested in front of the previous UN special envoy Christopher Ross.
In the following year, M’rabih staged a sit-in near the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) building, calling for speech and movement freedom, refugee/identity cards, passports by the host country (Algeria), health coverage, education, employment…
“Sahrawis do not enjoy their rights as refugees,” he deplored.
M’rabih had previously told BarlamanToday that families in Tindouf camps are starving and suffering from unemployment. He added that the UNHCR, which is in charge of distributing food in the camps, decreased donations due to the current crisis. Today, each inhabitant of Tindouf camps is entitled to 1,5 Kg of flour, 1 Kg of sugar, 1 L of oil, and 1 Kg of beans or lentils on a monthly basis.
He also noted that the economic and social conditions are appalling with jobs that pay between 15 and 30 USD per month. It is worth noting that the situation worsened recently with the population on short rations.
M’rabih was abducted by Algerian intelligence seven months after the said sit-in and taken to El-Rachid Prison (whose location in unknown), where he was tortured all day long by the polisario. After his release and subsequent escape to Mauritania, he initiated a lawsuit against Algeria at the UN Human Rights Committee.
The UN body issued its opinion in favor of the complainant for “kidnapping, arbitrary detention, torture and degrading and inhuman treatment”.
At first, the Algerian regime did not recognize its crimes. But in 2022, the UN Human Rights Committee condemned Algeria, granted financial compensation to the victim and called for holding the perpetrators accountable.
The Algerian regime seems to have a “death note” for all opponents and dissidents in Tindouf as “over 70 young men were killed in cold blood by the regime,” said M’rabih.
For Algeria, the Sahrawi population is only a card, not a cause. It is being instrumentalized and impoverished on purpose to delegitimize Morocco in the international arena.
On a final note, the said lawsuit has actually proved one thing: that Algeria is the polisario’s enabler in the dispute over the Sahara.
