Morocco Expels Spanish Pro-Sahrawi Activist from Western Sahara

The teacher and pro-Sahrawi activist for twelve years claims to have been monitored by the Moroccan police as soon as she arrived in Dakhla as part of a personal trip. Núria Bota has made more than fifteen visits to the refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria, but this is the first time she has gone to the Moroccan Sahara. She made the trip accompanied by a friend.

"We wanted to talk to the Sahrawis in the occupied territories, but without any journalistic or other objective. Just to know their status," she explains to Diari de Tarragona. After visiting Mauritania, she arrived in the Sahara where she was to spend a few days in Dakhla before going to Laâyoune. "On our second day in Dakhla, we already felt that we were being watched. Five to seven people observed us, followed us, took photos of us from a distance and even slept in a car in front of the hotel where we were staying," Bota recounts.

The young woman contacted one of her Sahrawi friends by phone to ask him if this surveillance was normal towards tourists. "This level of surveillance is unusual," the friend replied, stating that the Moroccan authorities probably already know her identity and her commitment to the Sahrawi cause. Bota and her companion were finally arrested as they were heading to Laâyoune. "They told us they were expelling us from the country and that they were going to take us to the airport by car," she confides, adding that she and her friend were treated as if they were terrorists.

"Already at the airport, they searched us, they forced us to open our suitcases, as if we were endangering the whole plane... If this is what we are experiencing, I can’t even imagine the repression that the Sahrawis must suffer from the Moroccan government," says Bota, who is one of the promoters of the educational project "Una Finestra al Món".