Occupied Laayoune, May 4, 2026 (SPS) – The local branches of the Collective of Sahrawi Human Rights Defenders in Western Sahara (CODESA) called on the United Nations and all international mechanisms to assume their legal and moral responsibilities in protecting Sahrawi human rights defenders and ensuring respect for international standards for fair trial.
The local branches of the Sahrawi Human Rights Group stressed, in a joint statement, the need to enable the Sahrawi people to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination in accordance with international law by organizing a free and fair referendum under the supervision of the United Nations Mission to Organize the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO).
The same branches said, “The arbitrary arrests and systematic targeting of Sahrawi activists come in the context of a policy of revenge in which the Moroccan occupation continues because of their political positions and activity in support of the right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination.”
It considered that these practices constitute “a blatant violation of the rules of international human rights law, including the right to freedom and personal security, the prohibition of torture, and freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.”
The joint statement also stressed that these measures constitute “a violation of the rules of international humanitarian law, which obliges the occupying power to protect the population under occupation and not to punish them for their peaceful activities, in light of the legal status of the territory.”
In the same context, the same human rights branches expressed their condemnation of the arrest of Sahrawi human rights defender, Salek Baber, a member of the Administrative Committee of CODESA in the city of Guelimim, and the Sahrawi student Abdel Samad, by the security of the warehouse, against the backdrop of their legitimate peaceful activity and their judicial prosecution in trials “of a clear political nature that have become used as a tool to criminalize peaceful human rights activity.”
The same statement considered that this targeting falls within “a continuing approach by the Moroccan occupation force, as it had previously arrested the former Sahrawi political prisoner, El Barr El Kantaoui, and subjected him to interrogation, in conjunction with the arrest of the Sahrawi student Sohail Tamloko, against the backdrop of the same peaceful positions.”
The local branches of the “CODESA” group announced their solidarity with the human rights activist Salek Baber and all Sahrawi students and political prisoners who were affected by these violations, denouncing the continued siege of the family of the Sahrawi student Abdelmoula Al-Hafizi since his release from prison after the end of his sentence in a flagrant violation of the right to dignity and private life. (SPA)
