Is the Spanish Government willing to let Aminatou Haidar die at the Guacimeta airport? Have Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, or José... lost sleep any night in these last two weeks?
Is the Spanish Government willing to let Aminatou Haidar die at the Guacimeta airport? Have Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, or José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero lost sleep any night in these last two weeks, over a woman who is weakening day by day, stranded in a terminal where she should never have arrived??
Judging by the few pronouncements made by the central Executive on this matter, it would seem not. That they are not really too concerned about the fate of this Sahrawi activist.
Meanwhile, the Spanish General Council of Lawyers has given the Government a real blow this week, accusing it of violating Aminatou's fundamental right to freedom of movement, enshrined in the Spanish Constitution, and even suggesting that a criminal offense could also be committed by attacking her freedom, by preventing her from leaving the country without, according to this body, any "explicit cause" for it.
However, Moratinos continues to insist that the Government's role was to "facilitate" Aminatou's entry into the country, and the only two options he has presented to her are to apply for a new passport at the Moroccan embassy, or to accept refugee status in Spain. Something that has been flatly rejected by the activist, who considers it "humiliating". And it was not she who decided to travel to Lanzarote without a passport, but she was expelled by Morocco, with the approval of the Spanish Government, which allowed her entry into the country under those conditions.
But although Aminatou Haidar made her response and her rejection of Moratinos' offer clear, he has not spoken again. She has launched a new challenge and insists that she is willing to go to her death if they do not return her to El Aaiún, but the Government of Spain has said nothing more. Is it willing to allow it? Is it really not going to do anything? Or is it going to wait for this hunger strike to have irreversible consequences on the health of a woman who, already, had physical problems due to years of imprisonment and torture in Morocco?
Of course, it is difficult to understand so much indifference, especially if one looks back. If one remembers the repercussion that the hunger strike of another "person" had three years ago, to call him in some way. And when the one who stopped eating was a soulless and conscienceless murderer, called de Juana Chaos, the matter did become a matter of State.
Even, and despite being a confessed criminal and proud of the pain he has caused, it seemed that in that case it could not be allowed that his health was resented. Finally, the Government allowed him to continue serving the prison sentence for which he was protesting "under a mitigated regime", that is, first in the hospital and then at home, as the Minister of the Interior, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, explained at the time, alleging "humanitarian" reasons.
And remembering those words, one asks oneself again: Does a woman who has received international recognition and who fights peacefully for a cause deserve less humanitarian treatment than a bloodthirsty terrorist? Is Aminatou not even worth an explanation of what Spain's attitude is going to be, after the activist has started her second week on hunger strike?
This week, the president of CC, Claudina Morales, said: "Neither the European Union nor the UN make much sense when we allow these things to happen." And she is absolutely right. Situations like this demonstrate that international organizations created in theory to defend international law, peace, security, humanitarian affairs and human rights, look the other way before messing with one of the influential countries. And just as they were not able, for example, to stop a war that they themselves considered unjust, such as the one in Iraq, much less to adopt any measure against the United States, they are not able to put order in this organized farce between the governments of Morocco and Spain with Aminatou.
Of course, the problem was in the origin, because Aminatou should never have been allowed to enter by force, and now the solution is even more complicated. But the courage that the Spanish Government did not have at the time, will have to have it now to stand up to the Moroccan country and stop appearing before the world as its accomplice.
