Aminatou Haidar

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Aminatou Haidar (2006)

Aminatou Haidar ( Arabic أمنتو حيدار, DMG Aminatū Ḥaidār ; * July 24, 1966 in Akka , Tata Province , Morocco ) is a human rights activist who campaigns for political self-determination in Western Sahara .

Life

Haidar was born in southern Morocco in an area where Sahrawis settled. She completed her studies in literature at the University of El Aaiún in 1994 with an exam. She is a single mother of two children and lives as an administrator in El Aaiún.

She gained notoriety above all for her commitment to political self-determination in Western Sahara, a country that was a colony of Spain until 1975 and was then occupied by Morocco and Mauritania in the pre-colonial period due to loose historical ties . While Mauritania withdrew from Western Sahara in 1979, Morocco has since controlled around two thirds of the country's total area. The United Nations is calling for a referendum to be held on the final status of the area under international law (cf. Western Sahara conflict ).

When Haidar took part in a demonstration in 1987, which demanded the referendum by peaceful means, she was arrested by Moroccan security forces. She and 17 other women were held in a secret location for four years without charge or a court order. According to her own statements, she was tortured several times during this time .

After 1991 she campaigned several times for better conditions for political prisoners in Western Sahara. On June 17, 2005, Haidar was arrested again during a demonstration together with human rights activists Fatma Ayach and Houssein Lidri. According to a report from Amnesty International , Moroccan police inflicted head injuries on protesters with batons . Haidar's wounds had to be sewn with twelve stitches in the Hassan Belmehdi Hospital. She was then interrogated for three days and charged with allegedly violent protests and belonging to a banned organization. She served seven months in a dungeon known as the Black Prison in El Aaiún. Between August 8, 2005 and September 29, 2005, Haidar went on a hunger strike in order to improve conditions for himself and her fellow prisoners. She was released after 178 members of the European Parliament appealed for her in a petition.

Aminatou Haidar in Lemleihess, 35 kilometers east of El Aaiún

Aminatou Haidar hit the headlines again in November 2009 when she was refused entry to her home country after a stay in the United States , where she was awarded the Civil Courage Prize . The Moroccan authorities confiscated her passport at El Aaiún airport because she had stated that her citizenship was “Sahrawi” (and not Moroccan) on the immigration form. After this act of civil disobedience , Morocco pushed them to the island of Lanzarote, which belongs to Spain . The Spanish authorities forbade her to return to Western Sahara on the grounds that she did not have a valid passport. As a result, she started another hunger strike on November 14, 2009 at Arrecife Airport . On the 32nd day of her strike, on December 17th, 2009, she was hospitalized for lack of fluids and vomiting blood. Shortly afterwards, Spain allowed her to travel to Western Sahara, where she arrived on the morning of December 18, 2009. Her case had previously attracted worldwide attention and sparked political controversy in Spain.

The media and supporters have long referred to Aminatou Haidar as the “Gandhi of Western Sahara” because of her non-violent resistance. She turned down offers from the Spanish government, which had repeatedly offered political asylum and citizenship. The Portuguese writer and Nobel Prize winner José Saramago , the film director Pedro Almodóvar and the musician Brian Eno , among others, campaigned for Haidar .

Awards

Aminatou Haidar has received several awards for her work:

In February 2008 she proposed the American Friends Service Committee for the Nobel Peace Prize .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Police report of the Comisaria de Arrecife, 2009 (PDF; 2.4 MB) saharalibre.es (accessed on July 13, 2011)
  2. ↑ a b Morocco / Western Sahara: Sahrawi human rights defenders under attack ( Memento from September 5, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Amnesty International, November 24, 2005 (accessed December 18, 2009)
  3. ↑ Members of the European Parliament who support the International Campaign for the liberation of AMINATOU HAIDAR and of all Saharawi political prisoners .
  4. ^ Western Sahara activist Haidar hospitalized ( Memento from December 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Frankfurter Rundschau, December 17, 2009
  5. ^ Civil rights activist Haidar is allowed to return home Zeit Online, December 18, 2009
  6. ^ The Gandhi of Western Sahara Die Presse, December 14, 2009
  7. ^ Nine square meters of desperation Süddeutsche Zeitung, December 10, 2009
  8. ↑ Winners of the Right Livelihood Award 2019 announced. In: rightlivelihoodaward.org. The Right Livelihood Foundation, September 25, 2019, accessed September 25, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Civil Courage News , Vol. 5, No. September 2, 2009.


personal data
SURNAME Haidar, Aminatou
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Sahrawi human rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH July 24, 1966
PLACE OF BIRTH Akka, Tata Province , Morocco