Life Story

Age: 18 years old
Place of residence: El Aaiun, occupied Western Sahara

At 18 years of age, Ayoub should have been starting his last year of high school in the occupied city of El Aaiun. Instead, he almost lost his life when the Moroccan police rammed him with an SUV during a peaceful protest.

“Like a lot of other young people in occupied Western Sahara, I started participating very early in protests, and in other actions of civil resistance against the occupation. I attended my first action when I was only 8 years old, and even though I was so young, I suffered the beating and the repression of the Moroccan authorities. They’re always trying to silence the voices that denounce the occupation of Western Sahara. But I’ve never been afraid and I‘ve continued to participate in these actions. The struggle for our freedom gives me energy.”

On June 28, 2018, Ayoub arrived at Smara Street where other Sahrawis had gathered to demonstrate their opposition to the occupation in front of Horst Köhler, the UN Special Envoy of the Secretary General, who was visiting the occupied territory. Ayoub joined the Sahrawi men and women who had congregated on the street to demand the right to self-determination. “I saw about ten police vehicles and a bunch of police and military, some in uniform but many others dressed as civilians. They tried to block the protesters so that Köhler and the rest of the UN staff wouldn’t see us. They used force to hold us back, but we’re used to this.” Ayoub was surprised, however, when all of a sudden, he saw one of the vehicles belonging to the Moroccan forces – a blue Toyota Prado – accelerate towards him. “I couldn’t understand what was happening. I was in shock when I felt the first blow from the SUV. When it hit me a second time, I was able to see the face of the police officer behind the wheel, and the hatred in his eyes.”

This second blow from the SUV threw Ayoub to the ground. The police fled the scene and Ayoub’s fellow protesters hurried to help him, carrying him out of the street and into a nearby house.

“I was barely able to answer their questions and I couldn’t stand up. The bottom part of my body didn’t respond and I felt pain all over. I needed medical attention urgently, but the people who were helping me knew that we couldn’t call an ambulance. Everyone was afraid, since the police are in collusion with the health workers. Maybe the ambulance wouldn’t take me to the hospital but instead to another place where the Moroccan forces would try to hide what they had done, maybe killing me or making me disappear.” For that reason, Ayoub’s friends took him in a private car to the public hospital of El Aaiun. “In the hospital, I was stripped naked but they didn’t attend to my injuries. The doctor just took pictures of me on his cellphone. Soon the police arrived. I was very light-headed and I didn’t really understand what was happening. The police officer tried to get me to repeat different things about what had happened, including how I had been run over a private car. Up until now, I still don’t know if the officer was making me give a false declaration or was trying to change my memory of what happened.”

The next day, finally, the doctors operated on Ayoub, explaining to him and his family that he had internal hemorrhaging and pelvic injuries. However the hospital never provided a report about the operation or even a document summarizing his hospital stay. After the surgery, Ayoub and his family learned from a Sahrawi association that the attack against him had been reported to the United Nations, and that Horst Köhler intended to visit Ayoub to see how he was doing and find out more about what had happened. “The next thing I knew, some police officers arrived and they told my mother and me that my condition was serious and that I needed to be transferred to Marrakesh for better medical attention. They put is in a police vehicle and took us to the El Aaiun airport where they put us on a plane. A few minutes after takeoff, the plane began to descend for landing, and we both knew that we had not yet reached Marrakesh. The police told us that there was a problem with the airplane and that we had to land in the city of Tarfaya, near the border between Western Sahara and Morocco. We were there for barely five minutes before the plane returned to El Aaiun.” Ayoub and his mother quickly understood that the police had only moved them in order to avoid their meeting with the Special Envoy of the Secretary General.

Nonetheless, on June 30th, when Ayoub’s condition had not improved, the authorities transferred him to Marrakesh. There, he spent two months in the hospital, under the constant surveillance of the Moroccan police and without receiving adequate medical care. “It was clear that they didn’t want to treat me. When the hospital staff learned how my injuries had been caused, the doctors only did the minimum to treat my conditions.”

After being released from the hospital, Ayoub and his family had to rent a place to live in Marrakesh in order to be able to attend his follow-up appointments. This not only imposes an economic burden on his humble family, but also means that Ayoub will lose out on the opportunity to complete his studies this year.

Update: At the end of 2018, Ayoub was able to stand up and to walk with crutches.