Düsseldorf: Conference on “Sexual violence in politics”-Khedijettou case

The “Joseph Von Eichendorff” room of the German Foundation “Das Gerhart-Hauptmann-Haus” in Düsseldorf hosted, on March 16, 2023, a conference under the theme “Sexual violence in politics”.

Moderated by journalist Tessniem Kadiri (WDR), this conference was attended by Khadijettou Mohamed Mahmoud, activist for the rights of stateless women, alongside Ms Sarah Lee Heinrich, President of the Federal Youth Office of the German Greens, Ms Franziska Brandmann , President of the Federal Office of the German Liberal Youth, and Ms. Christina Kampmann, Spokesperson for Home Affairs of the SPD Parliamentary Group in the Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Khadijettou’s invitation to this conference was an opportunity for her to describe her traumatized experiences with the sexual violence she suffered. At the age of 18, Khadijettou was “brutally” raped by the current leader of the Polisario, Brahim Ghali.

In this sense, she denounced the lack of support and accompaniment from society in general, in addition to the complicity and silence of the Algerian authorities who spared no effort to cover up this act of sexual violence.

Activist Khadijettou also recalled that since then she has been fighting relentlessly to obtain justice in the courts of Spain where she resides.

She then described the situation of human rights systematically violated in the camps of the sequestered people of Tindouf, including the inhuman living conditions in which the people of these camps live, and denounced the endemic corruption that prevails within the Polisario leadership as well as the misappropriation of international humanitarian aid by these same leaders.

To conclude her intervention, Khadijettou Mohamed Mahmoud appealed to the international community in general and to the German authorities to deploy more efforts to promote the rights of Sahrawi women and girls in the Tindouf sequestered camps.

It should be noted that this conference, which comes one week after the commemoration of International Women’s Rights Day, is a media platform to denounce both the impunity enjoyed by the mercenary rapist Ghali and the complicity of the Algerian authorities.