Human Rights activists alerted at an international gathering in Geneva to the gruesome practice by the Polisario in forcing women held in the Tindouf camps in southwestern Algeria to procreate against their will.
A Geneva based NGO that promotes economic and social development rights (PDES) launched the alert at the 55th session of the Human Rights Council.
In full sight of Algerian authorities, the Polisario separatist militias have violated the rights of scores of women to family planning forcing them to procreate.
Analysts believe forcing women to have offspring indicates the need for the Polisario to recruit fighters. After many years of selling illusions, many Sahrawi youth are either fleeing the camps at the risk of being shot at or joining militant groups in the wider Sahel.
The Polisario is also accused of abdicating children to countries like Cuba where they undergo indoctrination in pursuit of a separatist chimera, nurtured by Algiers.
Mothers who have been forced to give birth suffer later when their kids are taken away from them, said the NGO.
In addition to forced procreation, the population held against their will in the camps have endured all sorts of degrading treatment far away from media spot lights, due to Algeria’s intransigence to open the camps to international observers and independent media.
In 2009, two Australian journalists with the Sydney Morning Herald were invited to the camps by the Polisario representative in Australia with the aim to carry out a propaganda coverage in favor of the polisario leadership. While in the camps, the two journalists noticed slavery practices and decided to secretly film a documentary on the ordeal of black people in the camps.
The film, dubbed “Stolen”, exposes modern-day slavery in the refugee camps of Tindouf through telling the story of a Sahrawi girl called Fatim Sellami, herself a slave, who was reunited with her mother after 35 years of separation with the help of the United Nations.
The Geneva-based NGO held Algeria responsible for the rights violations in Tindouf, an area that was attached by French colonialism to modern day Algeria.