Khatt Achahid Contests Polisario’s Brutal Hold on Tindouf Camps

Khatt Achahid, a Sahrawi movement, has sent a letter to the African Union contesting the self-declared SADR entity’s claim to be sole representative of the Sahrawi people.

The group protests that the Polisario is treated by some African countries as a representative of the Sahrawi people, a claim that is contradicted by the reality on the ground, Morocco’s Ahdath daily reported.

Khatt Achahid wrote to the African Union that the Polisario, which imposes a blackout on human rights violations in the Tindouf camps represents only itself.

“The Polisario is not entitled to undertake negotiations in the name of the Sahrawi people,” the group said.

“The current Polisario leadership is in fact a group of individuals clinging to power, including criminals wanted by justice who trade in the suffering of the population in the Tindouf camps,” it said.

Protests are commonplace in the Tindouf camps where uprisings are often violently silenced. In 2004, Khat Achahid was established as an opposition movement to the Polisario leadership.

The Polisario has often resorted to violence to silence any protest within the camps. Last May, the Polisario has imposed a curfew in the camps to quell a protest that was going to be staged by the disenchanted population held in inhumane living conditions in Southwestern Algeria.

The Polisario militiamen, in connivance with the Algerian army, have reinforced the siege on the Tindouf camps to prevent Sahrawis from fleeing. The Algerian army has on multiple occasions fired at any Sahrawi attempting to leave the camps. Last March, Algerian soldiers fired without warning at a car outside the Tindouf camps, killing Kari Mohamed Ali El Ouali and his friend Ahmed Lebouiya Sahraoui.

The protest movements demonstrate the repressive authoritarian nature of the Polisario militias, which is fed by an obsolete ideology of the one-state party mixed with tribal despotism.