[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 22]
[Senate]
[Pages 29673-29674]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            AMINATOU HAIDAR

  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, last week I spoke about the situation of 
Aminatou Haidar, a Sahrawi human rights activist who has been on a 
hunger strike since shortly after November 13 when her passport was 
confiscated by Moroccan authorities and she was deported to the Canary 
Islands. She is now in the third week of her hunger strike, and her 
health has seriously declined. An agreement between the Spanish and 
Moroccan governments was reportedly reached on Friday, but it fell 
through at the last minute and Ms. Haidar remains at the Lanzarote 
Airport.
  Given this dire situation and the damage it is causing to efforts to 
resume good-faith negotiations on the future status of the Western 
Sahara, I want to repeat my appeal to the Moroccan authorities to 
reinstate Ms. Haidar's passport and allow her to return home to her 
family.

[[Page 29674]]

  Morocco and the United States are friends and allies. The denial of 
citizenship and forcible exile of Ms. Haidar is inconsistent with 
international human rights norms to which Morocco is a signatory and 
will accomplish nothing positive. It also raises the question, as do 
the recent arrests of other Sahrawi activists, of whether the United 
Nations' mandate in Western Sahara should be expanded to include human 
rights monitoring. I believe the State Department should seriously 
review this issue when the UN mission's term comes up for extension in 
the Security Council in April.
  There is still time, but it is running out, to resolve this issue in 
a manner that serves Morocco's interests and protects Ms. Haidar's 
rights.

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