#YourOpinionMatters – interview with Malainin Lakhal
1. Tell us what life was like growing up in Western Sahara?
Malainin: Growing up in the occupied Western Sahara is like growing up in a huge open-space detention camp. The Moroccan military occupation maintained a violent siege on the different cities of the territories since the first days of the invasion. In fact, the invasion started on December 31st 1975 with a big military operation that swept away hundreds of Saharawi nomadic villages, killing thousands of victims, thousands others disappeared, among whom more than 600 still not accounted for.
And of course, as a Saharawi child, growing up in Moroccan schools, and been monitored by Moroccan teachers was a very difficult experience because we were treated differently, as any colonised people would be. In the class, in the streets, in the playing grounds we were treated as suspects by policemen, often arrested if anything happens. We are the “dirty Saharawis”, the “Camels’ shepherds” as they used to call us. All my generation, and the generation that followed were accustomed to be arrested in the streets with or without reason, be taken to the police stations, bashed and tortured by Moroccan policemen just for fun or to ask for specific information, maybe spend a night or two in cells before been released. Many of us would be put in prisons for longer periods, or even disappear for long periods or forever.
In school, we were discriminated against. It was difficult in those days for a Saharawi to finish school. The colonial authorities would do anything to dissuade us from progressing in our studies. And, reaching the university was a miracle for many of us. As kids, we were forced to become very politically aware since our youngest age because of this treatment, and of course we were also politically active, and we tended to do all in our power to make life difficult for the colonial authorities in the streets, especially at nights. In brief, life in the occupied zones of Western Sahara is the life of a colonised people struggling for their freedom and oppressed by the colonizers because of this struggle. The only difference here is that the coloniser is another African country.
2. What does your country’s Independence Day mean to you?
Malainin: It means a lot of contradictory things at the same time. First, I am proud my people succeeded in a very difficult moment of their history to declare their political will and translate it into the constitution and proclamation of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). But, to this date, my country is not completely free or entirely independent. We still have two thirds of our country under the yoke of the Moroccan colonial occupation. So, there is no way we can celebrate our independence as we would like to do.
But, on the other hand, our Independence Day is also a reminder to us and to the world that something is wrong in Western Sahara. It is a message from our people to the so-called international community that we, the Saharawis, already have decided our future, and we are ready to confirm it in a self-determination referendum if we are allowed to. Otherwise, our choice is clear. We want to be free! There is no other alternative to our freedom. It is a must! We want to build our State and our Nation, and we are ready to do that, because we already have built our own institutions, our own government that succeeded for more than 40 years to run the only refugee camps in the world run, administrated and organised by refugees themselves. We only need France and its protégé, the Morocco Monarchy, to leave us alone, to stop sustaining neo-colonialism in our country.
