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Human Rights in the Tindouf Camps
Past Polisario Abuses and Accountability
This report focuses on present-day human rights conditions. From the start of their
conflict in 1975 until the 1991 ceasefire, both Moroccan and Polisario forces
committed abuses that are generally far graver than those that either party has
committed during recent times. Both parties tortured suspected opponents and held
them in detention for years at a time without charge or trial. Detainees on both sides
died under torture or during years in secret captivity. 213
International human rights organizations have documented Morocco’s practices of
long-term forced disappearance in Morocco and Moroccan-controlled Western
Sahara during the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. 214 An Equity and Reconciliation
Commission, established by King Mohamed VI in 2004, recognized the state’s
responsibility for many of these practices in its final report. However, the
Commission’s mandate explicitly excluded naming or bringing to justice perpetrators
of past abuses, and since it completed its work, Morocco’s judiciary has not brought
charges against a single perpetrator from this period. 215
International organizations have documented far less extensively the abuses
perpetrated by the Polisario during this period in the refugee camps that it
administered. In a 1996 report, Amnesty International noted the allegations of past
213 For Moroccan abuses, see, e.g.: Amnesty International, “Morocco/ Western Sahara: Human Rights Violations in Western
Sahara,” AI Index: MDE 29/04/96, April 18,1996,
http://archive.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE290041996?open&of=ENG-2D3 (accessed December 3, 2008); for Polisario
abuses, see, e.g., France Libertés, “The Conditions of Detentions of the Moroccan POWs Detained in Tindouf (Algeria), Report
of the International Mission of Inquiry, 11th-25th April 2003,” an English translation of the French original, at
www.arso.org/flreport_tindouf.pdf (accessed December 3, 2008).
214 See, e.g., Amnesty International, “Morocco: A Pattern of Political Imprisonment, ‘Disappearances,’ and Torture,” March
1991, and “Breaking the Wall of Silence: The ‘Disappeared’ in Morocco,” AI Index: MDE 29/01/93, April 1993,
http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE290011993?open&of=ENG-MAR (accessed November 26, 2008), and
“Morocco: The Pattern of Political Imprisonment Must End,” May 1994, AI Index: MDE 29/01/94,
http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/library/pdf/MDE290011994ENGLISH/$File/MDE2900194.pdf (accessed November 26, 2008);
Association de Défense des Droits de l’Homme au Maroc (ASDHOM), “La Disparition et les ‘Disparus’ au Maroc,” Paris, 1994;
International Federation of Human Rights, “Les disparitions forcées au Maroc: répondre aux exigences de vérité et de justice,”
November 2000, www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/dispmar.pdf (accessed November 26, 2008). Sahrawis were far from the only victims
of “disappearances” carried out by the Moroccan authorities.
215 Human Rights Watch, Morocco’s Truth Commission: Honoring Past Victims during an Uncertain Present, vol. 17, no. 11(E),
November 2005, www.hrw.org/en/reports/2005/11/27/moroccos-truth-commission-0.
Human Rights in Western Sahara and Tindouf 114