‫الهيئة الصحراوية لمناهضة االحتالل المغربي‬

Arrest and torture of Saharawi kid during the World Children Day

Nations and peoples celebrate the World Children Day on November 20 every year,
having been adopted in 1990 as an annual commemoration of the UN General
Assembly’s adoption of the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child and related
protocols.

Considering what this day represents as a call to strengthen cohesion and cooperation
in order to raise awareness on the protection of children across the world and
ameliorate their conditions to reach the appropriate levels for their well-being, the
Sahrawi Organ against the Moroccan Occupation, cognizant of the special protection
that the child should enjoy, which requires treating them with care, granting them the
necessary opportunities and facilities for their physical, mental, moral, spiritual and
social growth in a natural way and in an atmosphere of freedom and dignity. What
draws our attention is the shameful and degrading practices that children of the
occupied Saharawi cities are exposed to by the various police corpses and
administrative agencies of the Moroccan authorities of occupation. We regret this
even more when the violation of duty occurs from the workers of Education whose
role is stipulated in linking the World Children Day with their societies and nations,
and defending, promoting and celebrating the rights of the child, opening discussion
about ways to advance them.

Instead of invoking these high goals, the employee of the educational institution in the
occupied Saharawi cities turn into police informants that monitor the innocent
behavior of children to report them, just as what happened to the following childred:
Hayat Sayed Ahmed Sidya, born on 10/8/2008, who was arrested in Al-Nahda School
in the Occupied Aaiun at 10:00 a.m this 16/11/2020, she was transferred to the
headquarters of the Moroccan security, where she was subjected to psychological and
physical torture. Her crime was to have been wearing clothes similar to military
uniform and drawing Sahrawi national flag on her shirt. The girl was intimidated and
harassed, she was forced to sing the Moroccan anthem, sit on her knees and kiss the
image of the King of Morocco. She was subjected to all sorts of insults, kicked on the
stomach, they pulled her hair, and sexually harassed her touching sensitive areas of
her body. All this ill-treatment led the child to enter into a cycle of panic and trauma
scared of been assaulted whenever she is about to leave the house, even to go to
school.

On the thirtieth anniversary of the Declaration on the Rights of the Child, the Sahrawi
child is still a bleeding wound in the body of humanity, bearing the scars of four
decades of persecution and the deprivation of liberty, subjected to Moroccan
education programs that distort history and geography, and implant alienation, and an
educational environment that owes allegiance to the Moroccan intelligence services
more than it cares about the educator’s message and his human and professional
conscience.

The shocking situation continues, revealing that children in Western Sahara lack hope
for the amelioration of their conditions in light of the occupation of their homeland
 ‫الهيئة الصحراوية لمناهضة االحتالل المغربي‬

and the indifference adopted by the United Nations in the face of their need for a
humanitarian gesture, besides the continuing intention of Moroccan police officers to
directly harm them by subjecting them to beatings and torture: like the case of Rguebi
Larousi (boy); arrest like Hayat Syed Ahmad Sidya (girl), Nasrallah Baya, Yahya
Muhammad al-Talib, and al-Bukhari Lamedi (boys), and even murder, like the case of
the child Najem al-Karhi (boy), who was assassinated by gun-shot during the Gdeim
Izik camp in the occupied Aaiun. All this added to chronic psychological
complications as a result of the continuous siege of family homes, such as the case of
Muhammad al-Qasimi and Saad Douaihi. All of this is an attempt to discourage
Sahrawi child, before growing up, from developing a political conviction that pushes
in the direction of the demand to end the Moroccan occupation of the territories of the
Saharawi Republic.

And while we recall in the Sahrawi Organization Against Moroccan Occupation the
extent of the suffering of Sahrawi children under occupation, whose effects affect the
sensory perceptions of the child, through cultural influences and educational programs
governed by the logic of domination, which the Moroccan occupation state seeks to
establish its foundations in public life spaces and impose it by force:

And while we recall in the Sahrawi Organization Against Moroccan Occupation the
extent of the suffering of Sahrawi children under occupation, whose effects affect the
sensory perceptions of the child, through cultural influences and educational programs
governed by the logic of domination, which the Moroccan occupation state seeks to
establish its foundations in public life spaces and impose it by force:

And while we recall in the Sahrawi Organization Against Moroccan Occupation the
extent of the suffering of Sahrawi children under occupation, whose effects affect the
sensory perceptions of the child, through cultural influences and educational programs
governed by the logic of domination, which the Moroccan occupation state seeks to
establish its foundations in public life spaces and impose it by force:

Taking evoke the desert body against the Moroccan occupation of the size of the
suffering of the Saharawi children under occupation, which affect the effects of
sensory perceptions of the child, through cultural influences and educational programs
governed by the logic of domination by the state of the Moroccan occupation seeks to
lay the foundations in the spaces of public life and imposed by force:

While taking into account the amount of sufferings of Saharawi children under
occupation, which affects the cognitive perceptions of the child, through cultural
influences and educational programs governed by the logic of domination by the state
of the Moroccan occupation seeking to lay the foundations in the spaces of public life
and imposed by force, ISACOM:

- Denounces all forms of physical and psychological violence Saharawi children

suffer under Moroccan occupation, and we consider it to be rejected violation
of Child Rights.
- Strongly denouncing the security, military, and media blockade imposed on
the occupied cities of Western Sahara, which causes a dangerous
psychological damage to children.
 ‫الهيئة الصحراوية لمناهضة االحتالل المغربي‬

- Calls upon the International Red Cross to intervene to protect the Sahrawi
citizens, mainly after the violation of the cease-fire by the Moroccan forces of
occupation since November 13, 2020.
- Calls on international human rights organizations and associations to pressure
Moroccan authorities of occupation and impose the respect of human rights in
the occupied zones of the Saharawi Republic.

The Executive Bureau of the Sahrawi Organ against the Moroccan Occupation.
Occupied El Aaiun / Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.
20 November 2020