Denver – The Polisario-run Tindouf camps in Algeria are once again on the radar of international advocacy groups for human rights abuses.
Under the framework of a session of the UN’s Human Rights Council, activist Fadel Breika denounced the conditions in the camps and pointed out Polisario’s ill-treatment of political opponents.
The main concerns, according to Breika, remained “about the intensification of arbitrary detention practices aimed at suppressing freedom of opinion and expression, in particular by armed groups who impose their law by force and violence with the support of their state mentors, like the Polisario militias who resort to kidnappings and torture in detention centers on Algerian soil, including the sinister prisons of Errachid and Dhaybiya, where hundreds of Sahrawi opponents to the leadership of the separatists were killed.”
The largely self-administered camps are operated by Polisario officials, with limited administration from Algerian security forces. The lack of oversight has created issues in the resource-scarce camps.
Many witnesses from Algeria’s southern region accuse Polisario militias of using kidnapping and unjust detention as forms of control within the territory. Sahrawis that are in opposition to the group have particularly been targeted, many times being arrested by the militia in full view of Algerian authorities, says Breika.
Among the most brutal areas are the makeshift prisons known as Errachid and Dhaybiya, where “Hundreds of Sahrawi opponents to the leadership of the separatists were killed” for refusing to accept the militia’s self-imposed rule.
Both Algeria and the Polisario Front have suffered recent setbacks in their guerilla campaign as a result of increased international recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. Both groups have undertaken increasingly drastic measures as they attempt to retain what little power they have left in the region.
