Bir Lehlou (liberated territories), 02/06/2005 (SPS) The President of the Republic, Mohamed Abdelaziz, called the Moroccan people to "take the challenge of peace so as to be conform to international resolutions and the humanitarian values that constitutes the basis of Human rights and peoples right to self-determination", and to join their Saharawi brothers to "look forward to the future with hope and optimism".

An Open Letter Addressed by Mr. Mohamed Abdelaziz, President of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic and Secretary General of the Frente POLISARIO to Intellectuals of the Brotherly Moroccan People


Bir Lehlou, 31 May 2005

The occupied territories of Western Sahara and all other places inhabited by Saharawi population were the theatre, during the past week, to bloody confrontations between defenceless Saharawi people demanding their democratic right to self-determination, on the one hand, and Moroccan multiple security forces (army, police, gendarmerie, paramilitary forces, urban security service, etc.) on the other. The whole world then witnessed painful images of a small and peaceful people suffering repression and peaceful and legitimate slogans faced by military violence, arrest and torture.    

All peace-loving and advocates of international legality around the world were profoundly moved by those images. They voiced their denunciation of the brutal use of force to repress the freedom of expression and expressed their solidarity with the democratic right of the Saharawi people to self-determination. Moroccan people, the direct witness to those painful events, were the only part to have remained silent and inert as if the victim was a strange people other than the brotherly Saharawi people with whom, despite the past grievances, they remain bound by ties of history and neighbourly relations and with whom they share the great aspiration of working together with all the other peoples of the region to establish our common ideals of justice, democracy and development away from belligerence and dangerous chauvinism.

For a week, the rising Saharawi people received messages of solidarity and sympathy form political parties, associations of writers and intellectuals, activists of civil society and personalities from all over the world. But, the most significant messages that the Saharawi people have been eagerly awaiting for have not arrived yet, letters of solidarity from the brotherly Moroccan people.

A great people such as the Moroccan, who have given humanity great personalities such as Mohamed V, Mohamed Ben Abdelkarim El Khatabi, Zerghtouni, Hamou Zeyani, Fagih Bassri, Mehdi Ben Barka, Abdesalam Yassine, Alal Ben Abdallah, Abdlatif Zeroual, Saida Mnebhi, Tahani Amin, Omar Dahkoune, Mohamed Benouna, Omar Ben Jaloune, Nadia Yassine, Belhaouari and Dureidi and many others, and who always contributed to the fight against foreign colonialism and all forms of injustice and domination cannot afford to remain silent in front of the attempt to frustrate the hopes of the promising future.

Moroccan people who have also given international contemporary culture great personalities, icons of originality, diversity and creativeness, such as Mokhatar Sousi, Mohamed Abed Eljabiri, Abdallah Hamoudi, Abdallah El Aaroui, Mehdi El Menjra, Mohamed Tarif, Mohamed Zouzi, Mohamed Bradah, Taher Ben Jaloun, Fatma Lemrini, Moumen Dyouri, Abdallah Azriegha, Abdelatif Ellaabi, Abdel Hamid Akka, Mohamed Gassous, Thuraya Jebran and many others, a people who, despite the weight of the ongoing “Years of oppression”, have taken courageous steps towards freedom, respect for human rights, tolerance and democracy, cannot remain silent in front of the scenes of Moroccan soldiers brutalising Saharawi peaceful young people in university campus in Rabat.

Conscious of the great responsibility towards our common future, we had always tolerated the position of Moroccan intellectuals and political parties who had chosen to ally the Moroccan expansionist policies in the region during the first two decades of the conflict; and despite our tremendous feelings of injustice, we were always ready to forgive. Now, as truth is there for everybody to see, there is no excuse whatsoever for the Moroccan intellectuals, democrats, democratic political parties and civil society organisations to ignore the campaign of terror launched by the Moroccan State to repress a democratic aspiration in the Moroccan southern borders.

We repeatedly affirmed that the position Moroccan Government recently expressed rejecting the principle of Saharawi people right to self-determination is a radical deviation from the settlement efforts and a rupture with all the attempts aiming at reaching a peaceful and just solution to the conflict. This position is in contradiction with the commitments already undertaken by the Moroccan Government and violates the international legality and the genuine wishes of the Saharawi people. Such an attitude is clearly incongruent with the logic, with the spirit of the period and, as such, it may lead the entire region to the unknown.

From the beginning of the seventies, Moroccan Government, despite its miscalculations as to its approach to the conflict, used to express its respect to the Saharawi people right to self-determination and to the agreements it concluded accordingly with the Frente POLISARIO with a view to holding a free, fair and just referendum on self-determination in Western Sahara under the auspices of the United Nations.

Shortly after the slaughter against the historic uprising of Zemla on 17 June 1970, when the Saharawi people, under the banner of “the Movement of the Liberation of Sahara”, demonstrated against the Spanish colonialism, claiming for the national independence, at a time when Spain was facing international pressure to decolonise the Territory, the late King Hassan II said during a press conference in July the 30th, 1970 that “Instead of laying any territorial claim over the Spanish Sahara, we will demand a specific request: a consultation for the people of the territory in order to give them the opportunity to decide over their destiny and choose whether they want to live under Moroccan authority, under their own authority or under any other authority.”  

After the colonial authorities destroyed “the Movement of the Liberation of Sahara”, the Frente POLISARIO was constituted in May 1973 in order to continue the struggle of the Saharawi people for freedom and independence, while expecting that the brotherly Moroccan people would provide them with all help and would remain attached to the position referred to above as expressed by the late King Hassan II.

As soon as Spain declared it was planning to hold a referendum on self-determination during the first half of 1975, in a letter addressed to the UN in 1974, Morocco, which at the time was haunted by the myth of “the Great Morocco”, immediately re-considered its position and informed the UN General Assembly in 1974 that it had joint historical claims, along with Mauritania, over Western Sahara. In its resolution 3291(D-29-31/12/1974), at a clear request by Morocco, the General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to issue an advisory opinion regarding the nature of the ties between the Spanish Sahara, on the one hand, and the Moroccan Kingdom and Mauritanian entity, on the other, and on whatever effect that nature may have on the principle of self-determination.  The ICJ advisory opinion, issued on 16 October 1975, stated unequivocally that (para.16): “the materials and information presented to the Court do not establish any tie of territorial sovereignty between the territory of Western Sahara and the Kingdom of Morocco or the Mauritanian entity. Thus the Court has not found legal ties of such a nature as might affect the application of General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV) in the decolonization of Western Sahara and, in particular, of the principle of self-determination through the free and genuine expression of the will of the peoples of the Territory”.

The resolution was clear enough and unsusceptible to any selective interpretation. Yet, Morocco chose to be on a colliding course with international legality and with the wishes of the Saharawi people. Seven years of bloody war between the two peoples had to pass before Morocco was able to listen to reason when the late King Hassan II declared openly, in 1981 in the OAU Summit of Nairobi, that Morocco is willing to abide by international legality and to allow a UN-supervised referendum on self-determination for the Saharawi people.

The late King affirmed, in unequivocal terms, before the 37 Session of the UN General Assembly held on 27 September 1993, that “Morocco declares to you [United Nations] that it wants the referendum, and it is ready to have it held tomorrow if need be. Morocco is willing to facilitate the entry of international observers, the cease-fire, and the holding of a free and fair referendum, which outcome, it will respect”. After that, the two parties to the conflict, Morocco and the Frente POLISARIO, under the auspices of the UN and OAU, undertook concerted efforts to pave the way for the peaceful, just and democratic settlement of the conflict that would give the Saharawi people the final word in settling the conflict. Those efforts culminated, in the beginning of the nineties, in what has become known as “the UN-OAU peace plan” that provided for the holding of a referendum on self-determination. The plan that was approved by the Security Council in its resolution 960 (1991) gave rise to many hopes that a definitive settlement of the conflict was finally in sight.
 
In line with that position, the Moroccan King and many senior officials from the Government reiterated repeatedly that Morocco would be the first country to open an embassy in Western Sahara if Saharawis would vote for independence. In the same spirit of responsibility, the Frente POLISARIO declared in the mid-seventies and has even since reaffirmed repeatedly that it would accept whatever choice the Saharawi people would make in the referendum.

Despite Morocco’s insistence on re-considering some procedural key points in the agreements it had already signed, the implementation of the Settlement Plan and the Houston Agreements (September 1997) proceeded on the basis that Morocco was attached to the core of the peace process, namely the principle of the referendum on self-determination. In appreciation of that position and believing in peace as a strategic option, the Frente POLISARIO made successive concessions leading to enlarging the eligibility criteria from the lists based on the Spanish census of 1974, as contemplated in the original peace plan of 1991, to include, in the referendum on the future of Western Sahara, all Moroccans who had resided in the Territory before 1999 and who could prove that. This fundamental concession came within the framework of  the “Peace plan for self-determination of the people of Western Sahara” that was approved by the Security Council in its resolution 1495 (June 2003).

The regrettable volte-face of the Moroccan Government and its moving from objection to some procedural points in the UN Settlement Plan to the complete rejection of the very principle of self-determination is a completely irresponsible and unacceptable position that may bring things back to the state prevailing beofre Neirobi 1981. There is evidently a difference between making concessions in order to move things forward and trying to override the inalienable right of the Saharawi people to self-determination.

Will the Moroccan people accept, after all this that we go back to war? To go back to the time when huge resources were wasted in financing war instead of in providing Moroccan children with bread? Or to the time when Morocco used to spend 3 $ millions every day while poverty and unemployment were dominant in addition to deteriorating infrastructure and mounting foreign debt? Would Moroccan intellectuals such as Abdelhamid Barrada, Abderahman Ben Amer, Abderahim Eljamaai, Abdehamid Amin or Mohamed Sabar tolerate that their Government reneges on its international commitments to hold a democratic ballot? Would Moroccan political activists accept that the Moroccan people be implicated again in the attempts to override Saharawi people right to self-determination?   

Moroccan Government position, which rejects the principle of self-determination, is in violation of the international legality. The conflict in Western Sahara is a decolonisation question on the agenda of the UN General Assembly. The UN IV Commission on decolonisation has been dealing with the matter every year from its first resolution 1072 (16 December 1965) until its latest resolution 10318 (10 December 2004) in which it affirmed Saharawi people right to self-determination. This can also apply to all the resolutions of the UN Security Council, which has always followed the developments of the holding of the referendum on self-determination.

There is a fundamental question that the Moroccan people and intellectuals, who are known of their defence of international legality in many places of the world, have to consider. Why isn’t there a single country in the world that recognises any sort of sovereignty of Morocco over Western Sahara? Why the United Nations, through the advisory opinion of its legal affairs department issued on 29 January 2002, has denied to Morocco the status of “an administrating power of the Territory”? Why have many countries recognised the Saharawi Republic, which is a founding member of the African Union? Why does the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination enjoy widespread support and sympathy worldwide, while its modest experience in establishing an exceptional democratic experience in the refugee camps is highly regarded around the world? Why hundreds journalists, including the Moroccan journalist Ali Lmrabet, thousands foreign visitors and international and non-governmental organisations that work on the filed, have never spoken of any kind of sequestration?

I presume that thinking of answers to these questions is up to the Moroccan people in general and their intellectuals in particular, answers that should surpass the influence of the “conspiracy theory”, “mercenaries rhetoric” “enmity to the Moroccan territorial integrity” that have all become key elements of the official Moroccan propaganda.

To what extent would the intellectuals of the brotherly Moroccan people continue accepting that Algeria and its position be used as a pretext to cover all the failures of the Moroccan official positions as to the conflict? Why should the Moroccan people always look outside in order to account for what is happening inside? In 2005, Algeria did not express any position different from the one it had expressed when it voted for the UN resolution 2072 in 1965, which endorsed the decolonisation of Western Sahara by means of holding a referendum on self-determination. By adopting this position, Algeria was just part of a huge ensemble of countries who vote for similar resolutions every year.

The position of rejection to the principle of self-determination is not only divergent with the commitments undertaken by the Moroccan Government during the past years and with international law according to which Western Sahara is a Non-self-governing Territory pending for decolonisation through the exercise by the Saharawi people of their right to self-determination. It is also a sign of disregard for the will of the Saharawi people to choose their future freely. It is the will that manifested itself in Zemla uprising of 1970 against the Spanish colonialism and in El Aaiun’s uprising in 2005 against the Moroccan occupation, which has led to widespread demonstrations all over Western Sahara and other regions. Between these two dates, far from any propagandist discourse, the Saharawi people were able once again to seize the opportunity to express their attachment to their right to be free and to exist.

Four months prior to Morocco’s invasion of Western Sahara, the United Nations dispatched a fact-finding mission to the territory and the neighbouring countries (Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania) during the summer of 1975. In its report, which was published on 11 October 1975, the mission affirmed (para.420) it had observed that the population of the Sahara, or at least the overwhelming majority of the persons that it had interviewed, expressed unequivocally their desire for independence and opposition to the Moroccan and Mauritanian territorial claims. It also noted that they were supporting the objectives of the Frente POLISARIO that was fighting for the independence of their country. Three decades later, the UN former mediator, Mr. James Baker, affirmed to the American TV Channel PBS (August 2004) that the closer we (the United Nations) were to solving the problems related to the Settlement Plan, the more anxious Moroccans became about losing the referendum.  

First of all, Moroccan intellectuals should wonder about the reasons behind this big fear that the Moroccan Government has regarding the idea of the referendum. Does not the ballot include two options: independence of the Territory or integration into Morocco? Is it not paradoxical that the Moroccan Government speaks of part of the Saharawi people in the occupied territories “as attached to their Moroccanity” and other part “as held against their will in the refugees’ camps”, while it refuses to grant all those people the chance to express this identity through a democratic referendum, and thus God would save us from the atrocities of war?

Is it not contradictory that Moroccan Government that pretends to be a democratic State while it undermines democracy in Western Sahara through repression of fundamental freedoms, oppression and imposing of a military and information siege on Western Sahara? The worst is that the real intent of the Moroccan Government is to undermine the democratic right of the Saharawi people to self-determination. The main lesson that Moroccan people can get from the Saharawi latest uprising is that they should no longer be parroting the old discourse about some “conspirators” and “armies of imaginary enemies” who only exist in the minds of those who are benefiting from maintaining the confrontations between the two brotherly peoples. To talk about those who are benefiting from the greatest paradox, namely the fact that Morocco possesses the biggest army in the region while the majority of Moroccans lives in dire conditions of poverty and misery, those who reap the benefits of having the military machinery becoming immensely expanded at the expense of the genuine practice of democracy.

Could the noble Moroccan people tolerate seeing women, elderly and pregnant, being whipped and brutalised while others are being put in prison without having committed any crime apart from expressing peacefully their will to live in dignity and freedom? Would respectable persons such as Ben Said Ait Idder, Nadia Yassine, Abdallah Harif, Abraham Serfati, Boubeker Eljamaai, Ali Lmrabet, Driss Benani or Ben Shemsi and many others, would they tolerate that the ideals of humanity and freedom to_expression be repressed with such brutality in Western Sahara and under their very eyes? As the saying goes, we may not agree, but we have to defend each other’s right to disagreement.

The Frente POLISARIO, despite the war that was waged against our small people, has never lost faith in the common future of our two brotherly peoples. Despite the gross violations perpetrated by the Moroccan state against our civilians in the occupied territories and its brutal bombardment of Saharawi towns and villages, we have never resorted to any form of indiscriminate violence against Moroccan citizens at a time when terrorism was for some liberation movements a form of legitimate struggle. When the war came to an end, we embraced peace while looking forward to turning a new page along with our brotherly Moroccan people. Whenever the Moroccan Government put a stumbling block before the realisation of that noble objective, we would remove it with all necessary wisdom and open-mindedness, and that is what made it possible for us to reach the latest peace plan.

Therefore, desirous of establishing peace and believing in the sincerity of Moroccan citizens, we accepted the Moroccans residents in the Territory as voters, while having faith in our common ability to confront the challenge of achieving a just and definitive peace  by means of enabling the Saharawi people, the possessor of sovereignty, to exercise their right to self-determination. Although we openly stated our position, calling for total independence, we have never claimed that the referendum was to be “confirmatory” of independence, counting on the fact that only the test of democracy should confirm that option or otherwise.

Although the Moroccan Government persists in denying the existence of 155 Saharawi POWs while rejecting to account for 500 Saharawi disappeared in Moroccan detention centres, we have always opted, on many occasions, to bring happiness back to Moroccan families by releasing many groups of Moroccan POWs; we remain sincerely attached to our hope of making that happiness everlasting, despite the feelings of deep sadness among many Saharawis who keep on waiting to know something about their beloved ones who remain imprisoned or disappeared in Morocco.

It is now thirty years that the two peoples have been fighting each other, and it could really be a useful lesson for us to look forward to living in peace in our common future. What all those years have demonstrated is that there is no power in the world that can suppress the will of any people, however small it may be, when it comes to asserting its right to exist. The misadventure of invasion has left amid us thousands of widows and orphans and there is no reason today that makes us bring war back to our brotherly peoples, especially at a time when the avenue leading to a just peace based on international legality has been clearly identified.

Thirty years have irrecoverably done away with many possibilities to achieve a better life for our peoples and their rights to education, health and to live in dignity, away from tension, escalation and belligerence.

The Frente POLISARIO hopes that the Moroccan Government will realise that its position of rejecting to comply with the dictates of international legality, especially those related to the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination, is very dangerous indeed.

It also hopes that the brotherly Moroccan people will understand that all the concessions that we have made during the past years were not a sign of weakness but rather an evidence of sincere desire to settle the conflict in a just way, namely through the free and democratic ballot. Our strength stems from our strong faith in peace and aspiration for a prosperous future for the two brotherly peoples, a future that we will determinedly build together with all peoples of the region so that all geographical borders can disappear allowing thus our future generations to live in peace, prosperity and amity. To this end, the brotherly Moroccan people, with all its active forces and intellectuals, should be able to take the challenge, the challenge of a just peace in accordance with international resolutions, and the noble ideals including that of respecting the right of peoples to decide their future by themselves.

We are fully confident that the intellectuals of the brotherly Moroccan people are able to join us in our sincere peace endeavour, and we have firm faith in the promising future for all the peoples of the region.  


My highest regards and best wishes,

Mohamed Abdelaziz
President of SADR." (SPS)
010/090/100 022041 jun 05 SPS

Madrid, 02/06/2005 (SPS) Hundreds Spanish and Saharawis demonstrated Wednesday in front of the Moroccan Embassy in Madrid to denounce Moroccan forces repression against helpless Saharawi population in occupied territories and in the South of Morocco.

"No to violence, Yes to independence", "This Embassy is covered with innocents’ blood", "Long life to Polisario", "Free the detainees", are some of the slogans chanted by the demonstrators, who raised the flags of SADR and placards with slogans denouncing Moroccan illegal occupation of Western Sahara.

The Coordinator of the Associations (Spanish) of solidarity with the Saharawi people,
José Taboada, called the UN, the European Union and Zapatero’s Government to "assume their responsibility in the decolonisation of Western Sahara and in the protection of the Saharawi civilians". He regretted the passivity of these international bodies in front of the Moroccan repression in the Saharawi territory.

"Saharawi people waits for the last 30 years with a lot of serenity and the Moroccan Government spent 30 years of an illegal occupation of the territory", he said referring to Spanish Foreign Affairs Minister appeal to "serenity" addressed to the parties.
 
Similar demonstrations in front of Moroccan diplomatic missions in Spain already took place in Seville, Aljeciras, Valencia, Barcelona, while others are planed for this Saturday in Bougos and La Curona, it should be recalled. (SPS)

010/090/666/TRD 021701 June 05 SPS