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y the police that will keep tensions high locally and prompt censure of Morocco
internationally. The authorities invoke the risk of violence as a justification to
prevent or break up demonstrations. Governor Drif said, “When there are
demonstrations [that] can have consequences on persons and property, police must
do their job …. When the demonstrations are violent, the police find themselves
required to use force.” 178
Most pro-independence and human rights demonstrations in Western Sahara are
peaceful, Human Rights Watch concluded from interviews with numerous residents
of El-Ayoun. However, participants in some political protests, or persons on their
periphery, deliberately obstruct public thoroughfares, throw rocks at the police, and
in rare instances, throw homemade incendiary devices fashioned from cans, bags,
and bottles (Molotov cocktails). “Sometimes protests start peacefully and then
degenerate,” said Rachid Bouhbehane, an ordinary policeman in El-Ayoun. “You
have within a peaceful protest people who try to provoke by throwing stones. It
degenerates because of a minority who try to provoke.” 179 There are also, on occasion,
politically motivated acts of violence that persons perpetrate outside the context of
demonstrations, targeting police and sometimes civilians.
Such violence has injured both law enforcement officers and civilians. In the context
of a Sahrawi demonstration held on February 26, 2008 in the southern Moroccan city
of Tantan, policeman Abderrahmane Meski was fatally struck on the head by a stone.
Human Rights Watch interviewed several police and civilian victims of violence in El-
Ayoun. It was not possible for Human Rights Watch to confirm the identity of the
perpetrators or to know their political motivations, if any. Some incidents resulted in
the trial and conviction of Sahrawi youths for throwing stones or incendiary
projectiles. But the unfair nature of the trials makes it difficult to reach conclusions
about the defendants’ individual guilt or innocence. In most cases, at trial, the
accused claimed that they had committed no violent acts and were being prosecuted
because of their political sympathies alone.
178 Human Rights Watch interview with M’hamed Drif, El-Ayoun, November 6, 2007.
179 Human Rights Watch interview with Rachid Bouhbehane, El-Ayoun, November 6, 2007.
Human Rights in Western Sahara and Tindouf 94