THE WESTERN Saharan independence and human rights activist Aminatu Haidar arrived back home in El Aaiun, weak but happy, late on Thursday night after 32 days without food.
Ms Haidar (43) has eaten or drunk nothing but sugared water since November 14th when she was refused entry to her home in the Western Sahara and Moroccan officials confiscated her Moroccan passport and deported her to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands.
They claimed she had renounced her Moroccan nationality and insulted the country by describing her nationality as Saharan on the immigration form she filled in on her return from the US.
She had been in New York to receive a Kennedy Foundation human rights award.
The Sahauri activist staged her hunger strike in the departure hall of Lanzarote airport, attended by supporters and sympathisers including politicians, artists and writers such as Nobel laureate José Saramago.
Her condition deteriorated at the beginning of this week and she was transferred to the intensive care unit of Lanzarote Hospital to be treated for severe pain. However she continued to refuse food and threatened to fast to death unless Morocco allowed her to return home to her two sons.
She has been a campaigner for independence for the people of the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara, the mineral-rich African territory abandoned by Spain in 1976 and annexed by Morocco shortly after the death of General Franco. Their plight and struggle for independence is widely supported in Spain where many people believe their country handed them over to Morocco against their will.
In spite of many protests and a United Nations ruling, Morocco has repeatedly refused to leave the territory or hold a referendum.
Intense negotiations have been taking place between Madrid and Rabat for the past month to end the impasse, but Ms Haidar remained adamant that she would not give in to Morocco’s demand to apologise.
She turned down Spain’s offer of Spanish nationality – to which she was entitled since Western Sahara was Spanish at the time of her birth in 1966 – and she also refused the offer of political asylum.
In spite of demands from many sectors, the government refused to consider the suggestion that King Juan Carlos should make a personal plea to King Mohammed VI – with whom he has close personal relations. They said this would involve the king in politics.
Finally it was French President Nicolas Sarkozy who summoned Taib Fassi Fihri, the Moroccan foreign minister in Paris, and persuaded him that Morocco should withdraw its demand for an apology.
So, late on Thursday night she was driven from her hospital bed and put on board a private ambulance plane to be flown home to El Aaiun, where she was welcomed by thousands of jubilant supporters.
Doctors treating her there say it will be at least two months before she regains her strength and the 10kg she lost during her hunger strike.
She remains unrepentant though. “I will never apologise to King Mohammed. I am waiting for him to apologise to the Sahauri people for their suffering and their torture,” she said from her home yesterday.