Western Sahara: WLUML solidarity letter to Aminatou Haidar

WLUML's solidarity letter to human rights defender, Aminatou Haidar. The Moroccan government is blocking Ms. Haidar from returning to her home in Western Sahara. She is in the fourth week of a hunger strike at Lanzarote airport. (For regular updates on her critical situation, please go to: http://freesahara.ning.com/)

Dear Ms. Aminatou Haidar,

Women Living Under Muslim Laws joins NGOs and civil society groups around the world in expressing our deepest concern for your health and wellbeing and in condemning your treatment at the hands of the Moroccan state authorities. We are aware of your extraordinary personal commitment to the defence of the human rights of the Saharawi people, and support your right to return to your home, regardless of the present status of Western Sahara.

Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) is an international solidarity network that provides a collective space for women whose lives are shaped by laws and customs said to derive from Islam; our name challenges the myth of one, homogenous ‘Muslim world’. WLUML is also a member of Women Human Rights Defenders International Coalition.

The WLUML network expresses its solidarity with your protest against your deportation from your homeland by the Moroccan authorities, which was politically motivated and is in gross violation of international laws, such as Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. We admire your courageous refusal to retract your views on Western Sahara. We also recognise the severe personal toll this is taking upon you, separated from your family, and in particular from your children.

We take this opportunity to congratulate you on your Civil Courage Prize "for steadfast resistance to evil at great personal risk", and to condemn your torture and imprisonment by the Moroccan authorities who previously held you for four years in a secret jail.

WLUML joins you in asking that the international community brings pressure to bear on Morocco to accept a solution to the conflict that conforms with international law, namely: a referendum which would provide for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara in the context of arrangements consistent with the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations, as per Security Council resolution 1871 (2009); the cessation of the arrest and torture of human rights defenders; and the freeing of all prisoners of conscience.

In solidarity,

Samia Allalou (Algeria/ France), Fatou Sow (Senegal/France),
Ayesha Imam (Nigeria/Senegal), Sultana Kamal (Bangladesh),
Mufuliat Fijabi (Nigeria), Aisha Shaheed (Canada/Pakistan),
Eleanor Kilroy (United Kingdom), Sindi Medar-Gould (Saint Lucia/Nigeria)

on behalf of concerned networkers in Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML)

Women Living Under Muslim Laws
International Solidarity Network