|
London,
17/12/2006 (SPS) "Front Line", the international organisation for
the protection of human rights defenders, with branches all over the
world, is one of the most important human rights organisations
supporting the Saharawi people’s right to sel-determination.
By the end of the first semester of 2006 Front Line dispatched an
ad-hoc mission to the Western Sahara, which wrote a report on the
flagrant human rights violations perpetrated by the Moroccan
authorities in the occupied territories of the Western Sahara,
especially torture, repression and persecution of Saharawi citizens
members of human rights organisations, knowing that these
organisations face administrative blockage that do not allow them to
get legitimacy to work and are thus accused of illegal activism.
It is within the results of this report that the Saharawi human
rights activist, Ali Salem Tamek, is now undertaking a visit to the
Republic of Ireland, where there is the seat of Front Line, which
was constituted in Dublin in 2001 with the aim to protect the human
rights defenders.
Front Line pleads the necessity of giving the UN’s Mission for the
Western Sahara, MINURSO, the necessary mandate to include the
protection of the human rights and that the human rights function
should be thus ensured by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
"It is impossible to organise a referendum without the respect of
the freedoms of expression and association", the organisation
stressed in its analysis before it adds that the "maintain the
cease-fire will be impossible if the right to engage in peaceful
activities continues to be violently repressed by the Moroccan
authorities".
The organisation, further, called on the representatives of the
European Union and of the individual European Governments to
"implement the directives of the EU relative to the protection of
the human rights defenders in the Western Sahara".
Besides its founder, Denis O'brien, President of a telephone and
Internet group in Ireland, "Front Line" counts with the membership
of important personalities within the circles of human rights
activists such as Mr. Pierre Sané, ex-Secretary General of Amnesty
International (1992-2002), Michel Forst, Director of the Social and
Human sciences within the UNESCO, and member of the administrative
Council of the "International Service for Human Rights-Geneva".
Among the members there is also Mrs. Noeline Blackwell, ex-director
of the Irish Branch of Amnesty International and exercising
President of International Human Rights Trust, which militates for
the integration of the human rights aspect in the UN’s missions in
different countries. (SPS)
010/090/700/TRD 170921 DEC 06 SPS
|
