Two survivors of Tindouf make moving testimony before ngos in Geneva
Morocco-Algeria, Politics, 4/18/2002

Two Sahrawi women who succeeded to flee the Tindouf sequestration camps in south Western Algeria made this Wednesday in Geneva a moving testimony of their ordeal before representatives of several women's ngos.

The two Sahrawis, Souilka Aamari and Fatimatou Mansour, spoke before the women's caucus, on the sidelines of the ongoing 58th session of the Human Rights Commission, of their daily ordeal in Tindouf, stronghold of the polisario separatists, of their moral and physical sufferings, of the unspeakable violations of the rights of sequestered women and children.

Souilka Aamari told the caucus how she had been separated from her daughter, who had been deported to Cuba while Fatimatou Mansour spoke of her own experience as a deportee to Cuba when she was still an 8-year-old girl and of the ten to twelve years she spent there. She described the ordeal of hundreds of small and young Sahrawi girls deported to Cuba, where they are submitted to hard labor in sugar cane fields, handed to sexual exploitation and prostitution networks or forcibly enrolled in military training where the enemy is always Morocco.

Souilka Aamari, who spent 17 years in the Tindouf camps described the inhuman living conditions in these camps, dwelling on the lack of hygiene and of adequate food -as the humanitarian assistance destined to the sequestered populations is embezzled by the polisario leaders. She also spoke of the rapes practiced by polisario leaders, of the physical torture exercised on all those who dare voice an opposition to the polisario. But for Souilka Aamari, physical torture in nothing compared to the "torture of the soul" the "indescribable torture" as she put it. How can you describe the internal wound when your child is snatched from your lap to be sent to so a far, inaccessible continent? She said appealing to the Caucus and to international ngos to initiate moves to end the sufferings of the mothers and children sequestered in Tindouf, some of whom for more than 25 years.

The session, held under the chairmanship of Ms. Conchita Poncini, chairwoman of "Woman's Condition" ngo, was followed by a debate, wherein several participants conceded that they had been so far misled by the polisario propaganda and had no idea on the reality in the camps. They pledged to inform politicians and human rights activists in their respective reality.

One of the participants, an executive in a ngo struggling against women trafficking and violence against women, Ms Marion Boeker, who is member of the Green party in Germany, pledged to send a letter to Cuban Leader Fidel Castro to denounce the ordeal of Sahrawi children deported to Cuba and ask for explanations on their situation. She asked the Sahrawi women to make their testimony again Thursday during the debate on "women's trafficking " organized by her ngo and the "women's international League for peace and freedom." Ms Boeker also invited all Sahrawi women who wish to do so to attend the coming international conference on violence against women to be held in Nigeria to speak of their experience.

Ms. Conchita Poncini on her part expressed the wish to visit the southern provinces of Morocco to meet a maximum of sahrawi women to get first hand information on the tragedy they lived in the Tindouf camps.

Previous Stories:
  NGOs group unveils ordeal of Tindouf sequestered population   (4/6/2002)
  Morocco officially asks Switzerland and Geneva convention signatories to act for release of 1,362 Moroccan POW's   (3/29/2002)
  Moroccan NGOs present series of publications on human rights violation in Tindouf camps   (2/28/2002)

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