Over the past two months, Sahrawi human rights defenders in occupied Western Sahara have faced an escalating campaign of sieges, surveillance, arbitrary detention, and forced transfers a pattern aimed at isolating defenders from one another and obstructing independent human rights monitoring.
Since the night of 19 May 2026, Moroccan forces have besieged the Laayoune home of Sahrawi human rights defender Houssein Mojahid, where CODESA President Ali Salem Tamek was staying with his wife and young son. Authorities surrounded the property, blocked entry to defenders and relatives, and cut the electricity. Tamek’s family had already been forced from their previous home after authorities pressured the property owner. CODESA Vice-President Khadijetou El Dweihi has separately faced sustained surveillance around her own home.
The siege echoes what happened weeks earlier in Boujdour. When student movement leader Abdelmoula El Hafedh was released on 16 April 2026 after ten years of politically motivated detention, authorities imposed a five-day siege on his family home to keep well-wishers away. On 4 May, he was detained again near Boujdour, questioned about his activism, and abandoned 60 kilometres away with no explanation.
Others who came to welcome him faced consequences too: Elouara Khaya, sister of prominent defender Sultana Khaya, was assaulted and expelled on 17 April; Leila Lili was abducted from her hotel by plainclothes police on 9 May and forcibly transferred to Laayoune; and young CODESA member Boujemaa Benmoussa was stopped, interrogated for hours, threatened, and had his belongings confiscated on 11 May. Together, these incidents suggest a deliberate effort to keep outside defenders out of Boujdour and isolate those who remain.
Meanwhile, concern is mounting over Enaâma Asfari, CORELSO Vice-President and one of the “Gdeim Izik prisoners” sentenced to 30 years after the 2010 dismantling of a peaceful protest camp a detention the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention deemed arbitrary in 2023, citing torture-extracted confessions and denial of legal counsel.
After three unanswered 48-hour hunger strikes in May, Asfari began an open-ended strike on 8 June 2026 to demand the WGAD ruling be implemented. Held in the infirmary of Kenitra Prison with only one hour of daily exercise and no lamp, table, or chair, he had lost five kilograms after twelve days without food. He says his mind “continues to work,” even as his health grows more fragile.
Each defender named here was targeted not for any act of violence, but for peacefully documenting abuses and asserting the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination. Morocco has an obligation to protect their health and lives, and to end the harassment and restrictions imposed on those still working outside prison walls.
