SAHARA PRESSE SERVICE

Chahid El Hafed, 02/12/2006 (SPS The President of the Republic, Mohamed Abdelaziz, received the ex- Minister for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Sao Tomé and Principe, Mrs. Marie De Amorin, Friday in the seat of the Presidency, at the end of a two days visit she undertook to the Saharawi refugee camps.

The ex-Head of Sao Tomé et Principe diplomacy had had many meetings before with members of the Saharawi Government and Polisario Front’s National Secretariat before she gave a lecture in the 27 of February School on the Issues of Decolonisation in Africa.

She also visited many socio-economic institutions in the Saharawi refugee camps, the National Museum of War and met with the bureau of the Consultative Council of the Wilaya of El Aaiun.

A feverous militant for the decolonisation in her continent, Mrs. De Amorin had also been the Minister for Education in her country before she left Government’s positions to serve as the UN’s Regional Director for Africa in charge for he programmes of the environment. (SPS)

010/090/000/TRD 021055 NOV 06 SPS

SPS
SADR/SOUTH AFRICA/HUMAN RIGHTS

Seminar on human rights situation in the occupied territories of the Western Sahara in Johannesburg

Johannesburg, 02/12/2006 (SPS) The South African Committee for Human Rights organised on Thursday a seminar under the theme "the human rights situation in the occupied territories of the Western Sahara" and declared the "emergency of enlarging the mandate of the MINURSO", according to a press release issued by the Saharawi Ambassador to South Africa.

The seminar, which was organised at the seat of the South African human rights organisation, was attended by representatives of the diplomatic corps in Pretoria, representatives of South African political parties, NGOS, searchers and journalists, the press release indicated.

In his intervention, Mr. Mtselsio Thipanyane, Executive Director of the Committee put forward "the serious human rights violations in the occupied territories of the Western Sahara, perpetrated by Morocco, which are periodically denounced in international reports and in concordant testimonies of Saharawi citizens".

"This is a major concern for our organisation and our seminar aims to put the head lines of a work programme that will be organised in coordination with our partners to ensure a better defence of Saharawis, so as to consecrate the Saharawi people’s right to self-determination and independence", he added.

"In reality, the essence of the problem is no more than the total denial of the Saharawi people as a people who have the right to decide over their future and to exist, and out of this denial comes all these horrors to which they are unjustly subjected since thirteen years", he said.

"It is thus time for the international community and the UN to enlarge the mandate of the MINURSO and constitute concrete mechanisms to enable the surveillance of the human rights situation to prevent their violation" (...) "and lift the embargo imposed on the occupied territories to open them to journalists, NGOs and independent observers", he added.

During the seminar, many personalities intervened, including Mr. Ebrahim Saley, Director of the Department of North Africa in the South African FA Ministry, Mr. Eddy Makue, Secretary General of the South African Council of Churches, Mr. Oubbi Bouchraya Bachir, Saharawi Ambassador to South Africa, Mr. Timothey Othieno, from the Institute of Global Dialogue and Mr. Ali Salem Tamek, Member of the Collective of the Saharawi human rights defenders and ex-political prisoner.

The South African Committee for Human Rights exposed, on the margin of the seminar, pictures of the Saharawi victims of the Moroccan repression showing people injured Saharawis savagely tortured, burned alive or assassinated. (SPS)

020/090/000/TRD 021255 DEC 06 SPS

SPS
SADR/SOUTH AFRICA/ANC

"Not to denounce the crimes committed against the Saharawi people is to become an accomplice in committing them", Mrs. Dlamini affirms

Pretoria, 02/12/2006 (SPS) The Secretary General of the African National Congress Women League (ANCWL), Mrs. Bathabile Dlamini, expressed her "indignation regarding what is happening in the Western Sahara", affirming that to abstain from "denouncing the crimes committed against the Saharawi people, especially against the Saharawi women by the Moroccan expansionist and racist regime, is to become its accomplice", according to a press release issued by the Saharawi Embassy in South Africa.

Mrs. Dlamini, who was receiving the Saharawi human rights activist, Ali Salem Tamek, expressed her "support to the Saharawi people’s heroic struggle for the self-determination and independence", asserting that her "organisation will mobilise in the continental and international forums to make the voice of the Saharawi women heard".

On his side Mr. Ali Salem Tamek explained to his interlocutor, in details, "the crimes and serious human rights violations perpetrated daily against the Saharawi citizens in the occupied territories, sometimes few meters from the headquarters of the UN, which proved to be incapable to organise the self-determination referendum to the benefit of the Saharawi people".

"Kids, women and old persons are not spared and the most odious crimes were committed against them" he said, stressing that "the Moroccan regime relentlessly attacked the Saharawi women because they are the keepers of our people’s traditional values, resistance and dignity".

"The torturers of the Moroccan regime exercise rape on the Saharawi women, and I witness here on what my own wife was subjected to by the Moroccan police so as to break my own family and punish me for my political activities. This is what happened to me but this crime is largely committed in the detention centres by the criminals of the Moroccan regime and many Saharawis were victim to it", he added. (SPS)

020/090/000 021220 DEC 06 SPS

SPS
OCCUPIED TERRITORIES/REPRESSION

Eight persons arrested in three occupied cities of the Western Sahara

Smara (occupied territories), 02/12/2006 (SPS) Eight persons at least were arrested in the occupied cities of Smara, El Aaiun and Dajla (Western Sahara) during demonstrations on Thursday to claim "the immediately withdrawal" of the Moroccan occupation of the Western Sahara and the exercise by the Saharawi people of their inalienable right to self-determination, according to SPS correspondence.

These arrests took place in Smara, where students raised the flags of the Saharawi Republic and chanted slogans in favour of the independence of the Western Sahara, before they were "savagely" dispersed by the Moroccan forces of repression.

The Moroccan forces of occupation arrested six Saharawi demonstrators, mainly Mohamed Mouradi, Soukeina Moulaye Mohamed Salem, Yaya and her sister Najat Moustapha El Kheir Beilal, Moulimnine Enna Dech Totay and Mina Mohamed Si Lehbib Cheikh. The police also ransacked the house of Moustapha El Kheir Beilal and tortured the members of the family.

In the occupied city of El Aaiun the Moroccan forces of repression arrested the young Saharawi, Aziz Mohamed Mouftah, during a demonstration organised by dozens Saharawi citizens advocating the right to self-determination.

In the occupied city of Dajla the Moroccan police arrested the Saharawi citizen, Habib Ahmed Mokhtar, who is married and father to nine children, in his house and tortured him in front of his family before they took him in inhumane conditions to a police station then transported to an unknown destination, a source close to his family reported.

As a reaction to these set of abusive arrests, the Saharawi citizens in Smara improvised a sit-in in front of the police station of the city where the arrested youngsters were detained, asking for their immediate release.

The Moroccan colonial authorities were then forced to release the arrested Saharawi students after the have tortured them, interrogated and after they were threatened by the famous Moroccan torturers Bardan, Kamal Adi and Rabi of transfer to the Carcel Negra in El Aaiun.

On another hand, in Agadir (south Morocco) a Saharawi student, Laroussi Mohamed Salem Yahdih alias (Hadi Laroussi) was arrested in the University of 'Ibn Zohr' by Moroccan militias backed by agents of secret services in civil clothes, it was indicated.

The victim was before arrested because he participated to a peaceful sit-in organised by the Saharawi students advocating the Saharawi people’s right to self-determination, and was threatened by Moroccan agents of assassination if he participates in any future demonstrations. (SPS)

020/090/110/TRD 021110 DEC 06 SPS