Sahrawi Human Rights Committee condemns systematic repression by Moroccan occupation against Sahrawi political prisoners 

Shaheed El Hafed (Refugee Camps), 19 February 2025 (SPS) – The Sahrawi National Committee for Human Rights has expressed its condemnation of the arbitrary measures imposed by the Moroccan occupation authorities on Sahrawi political prisoners. 

In a statement issued on Wednesday, the committee strongly denounced the series of arbitrary measures enforced by the administration of the occupying state's prisons against Sahrawi political prisoners since their arbitrary arrest, in an attempt to "break their will and strip them of their humanity." 

The statement clarified that "among these measures are preventing their families from visiting them, obstructing lawyer visits, repeatedly transferring them between multiple prisons within Morocco to physically exhaust them, detaining them in cells unfit for living, and the unjust practices carried out by prison guards around the clock, such as repeated nighttime searches, denial of medical treatment and communication, and more." 

The statement expressed the committee's condemnation of the continued practices of the Moroccan occupying state, which employs "various forms of torture and degrading treatment against Sahrawi civilians under occupation, aiming to deter them from continuing their peaceful resistance. The Moroccan state uses violent and repressive methods that violate human dignity and are classified as crimes against humanity, such as arbitrary arrests, unfair political trials, forced displacement, systematic torture on a wide scale, and the mistreatment of Sahrawi political prisoners and their families, who are subjected to degrading acts by Moroccan prison authorities." 

The Sahrawi Human Rights Committee urged the international community to intervene "urgently" to prevent further "serious" deterioration of the human rights situation in the occupied territories of the Sahrawi Republic. It also warned of the consequences of the dangerous escalation campaign against Sahrawis opposing the Moroccan occupation and its practices that violate all international norms and conventions.