SAHARA PRESS SERVICE

Bir Lehlu, 06/07/2005 (SPS) The President of the Republic, Mohamed Abdelaziz, called on the king of Morocco, Mohamed VI, to stop the repression against Saharawis in Western Sahara, an act that does honour his majesty, asking him to act with wisdom to promote a peaceful solution to the conflict based on the respect of Saharawi people’s inalienable right to self-determination and independence.
 
"it is not acceptable that the Moroccan forces continue to violate the Saharawi human rights on daily basis, for it does not honour the Moroccan Monarchy at all to suppress the freedom of the Saharawis and violate their sanctities and oppress their human rights activists, nor can it be a victory or a courageous deed to kidnap and torture decent and peaceful Saharawi women", wrote the Head of the State in an open letter he addressed to Mohamed VI, of which SPS received a copy.

"The continuation of this policy may lead to dangerous consequences, including the possibility of your Government’s driving the region into war again, the engagement of Moroccan forces in horrible mass killings against defenceless Saharawi citizens such as those perpetrated in East Timor, or the eventuality of attaching a neighbouring country", he warned.

The President showed special concern about the Moroccan Government constant change of position and rejection of international legality. He estimated that these positions "constitute a negation of the essence of the whole process, namely the self-determination referendum" and, as such, may unfortunately "open the conflict for many eventualities".

He launched a sincere appeal, on behalf of the "unavoidable common future", which is to be achieved and realised, asking the king of Morocco "to assume our responsibilities before history to spare our peoples and the peoples of the region situations of another war on the threshold of this new century, when the world, including Morocco, is bent on establishing values of democracy, tolerance and freedom, and where it is no longer tolerable, with whatever arguments, to override any people’s democratic right to self-determination and existence".

Here is the complete text of the letter:

" The Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic
An Open Letter to His Majesty Mohamed VI, King of Morocco
Bir Lehlou, 4 July 2005
 
In the name of Allah, the merciful and the compassionate
 
His Majesty,
 
Since 21 May 2005, towns of Western Sahara and some towns in South of Morocco and Moroccan universities have witnessed serious events as a result of the repression carried out by security and police force, and the Moroccan army against Saharawi citizens who were demonstrating peacefully to proclaim legitimate demands including essentially the calling for the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination.
 
The situation has escalated to a serious stage marked noticeably by a curious insistence by the Moroccan security forces on employing myriad forms of repression, terror, kidnapping and arrest without regard for fundamental human rights.    
 
Despite our repeated calls upon the Moroccan Government to cease these inhuman practices against innocent and defenceless Saharawi citizens, the Government has chosen to pursue its dangerous policy thus leading the situation to a potentially explosive stage, given that the practices employed by the Moroccan authorities against children, elderly, women and human rights activists have now become intolerable.
 
This particular situation and developments compel me to address you personally as I did in the wake of the demise of your father the late Hassan II.
 
His Majesty,
 
On that sad occasion, I conveyed our condolences, on my own behalf and on that of the Saharawi people, for the death of a man who had experienced the hardship of war against this peaceful people but did not wish to depart without giving a chance for peace when he accepted, in 1981, the principle of a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Western Sahara in accordance with the resolutions of international legality including the resolution 2072 (1965), and on the basis of the exercise by the Saharawi people of their right to self-determination through a free, democratic and fair referendum.
 
Our condolences were not only a demonstration of our grief for the departure of a peace partner but also a sincere expression of legitimate aspirations, on the eve of your accession, and hopes that we had, with all responsibility, for brining the peaceful settlement to its conclusion, and thus turning over a dark page of the history of the brotherly Saharawi and Moroccan peoples, and looking for establishing solid relations of cooperation, brotherhood and mutual respect, and restoring the lost confidence of our coming generations in having a prosperous future, where trees of friendship and neighbourly relations can grow high above the ruins of shells, berms and deadly mines.
 
Six years after that letter, and despite all feelings of sorrow, I still find it hard to accept that the condolence was actually an expression of a deep grief for the loss of a partner, and that the hopes of Spring 1999, which we deemed legitimate given the hope we have had in your wisdom and modernising spirit and in your efforts to further the institution and respect for liberties, were reduced to naught, after the Moroccan Government opted for pursuing—vis-à-vis the cause of the Saharawi people in particular—positions and policies that have remarkably been doomed to failure.
 
His Majesty,
 
Sixteen years of an arduous war have elapsed, which have impacted on every Saharawi and Moroccan household, separated families, orphaned and windowed many and consumed billions of Dollars for the wrong cause which is that of killing and sowing hatred to the detriment of the dreams of the innocent generations of the two brotherly peoples who have waited long for a peace that has not come yet...
 
It was out of that tragedy that hopes for a just peace emerged when the Moroccan Government and the Frente POLISARIO, under the auspices of the international community, accepted the UN-OAU Settlement Plan on the holding of a self-determination referendum in Western Sahara. It is the plan that we elaborated with great efforts, and had to endure during its the stages of its implementation, but, despite the drawbacks, it was our attachment to the cardinal point, namely the right to self-determination, that kept the spectre of war away from the region for fourteen years, while leaving the door of the hope of peace open half-way. 
 
We sincerely hope now that history will not hold you responsible for thwarting that hope and closing that door by driving the two brotherly peoples into another “war against one’s kin”.
 
The positions adopted by your Government regarding the conflict in Western Sahara during the past years were registered at the United Nations in a memorandum issued by the Moroccan Foreign Ministry 09/04/2004, which expressly called for overriding the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination. These positions not only contradict starkly the dictates of international law and legality approved since 1965 regarding the decolonisation of Western Sahara but also express a clear and public reneging by the Moroccan State on all the commitments and pledges that it had concluded and undertaken before the entire world, right from the declaration in Nairobi of 1981 to the Settlement Plan of 1991 and its additional Houston Agreements of 1997.
 
These positions are of a deep and genuine concern for the Saharawi people, given that they constitute a negation of the essence of the whole process, namely the self-determination referendum and, as such, it unfortunately opens the conflict for many eventualities.  
His Majesty,
 
For the unavoidable common future that is waiting anxiously to dawn on the region, I would like to address you to call upon you to cease reproducing the past experiences and deadly methods, and for us to assume our responsibilities before history to spare our peoples and the peoples of the region situations of another war on the threshold of this new century, when the world, including Morocco, is bent on establishing values of democracy, tolerance and freedom, and where it is no longer tolerable, with whatever arguments, to override any people’s democratic right to self-determination and existence. 
 
All human rights advocates and democratic and peace-loving people all over the world have been deeply saddened for a month by the images of brutal repression that has been unleashed against the Saharawi peaceful demonstrations calling for self-determination, which took place in many places inhabited by the Saharawi people in Western Sahara and in Morocco.
 
Does it honour the King, the Monarchy and the Moroccan people, with all its active and democratic forces, to have young people being trampled on on the streets and university campuses? Does it honour them to have Saharawi young women being tortured and disposed of on roads? Does it honour them to have Saharawi houses being demolished, despoiled and pillaged?
 
Does it honour Morocco, which aspires for democracy, to have the soundness of argumentation being replaced by the banging of soldiers’ boots and the clatter of prison padlocks?
 
What was the crime committed by Ms. Aminatou Haidar, the Saharawi human rights activist, to be brutally tortured and kidnapped from the hospital leaving her two children behind, and then put, injured and ill, into the Dark Jail in Aaiún? Has she done anything more than proclaiming loudly the right of a people, which is being guaranteed and enshrined in all international conventions?
 
What was the crime committed by the peaceful Saharawi demonstrators to have innocent citizens, elderly and women being brutally tortured and terrorised? Why Hassana El-Heirish was severely and unjustly sentenced to twenty years imprisonment and Bouamoud Mohamed Salem to fifteen years imprisonment and Dawadi Omar to fifteen years imprisonment, for instance? Have they done anything more than calling peacefully for the holding of a referendum that the Moroccan Government itself had accepted until very recently?
 
Why do Moroccan authorities prohibit delegations representing parliamentarians, human rights organisations, non-governmental organisations and the media from entering the Saharawi occupied territories? Why do they impose a security blockade and have a massive military presence in the neighbourhoods and streets in Saharawi towns?
 
 
His Majesty,
 
The campaign designed for augmenting tension between the Moroccan and Saharawi peoples and the accusations of having hostile sentiments and the disregard for the future, by driving the Moroccan people and Government to exhibit extremist positions regarding the peaceful settlement of the conflict, all bear eloquent testimony to the fact that the outdated sceptre of the far-flung past is still the reference point for determining the future positions.   
 
The counsellors and aids and others who transmit to you false images and misleading information along with fabricated news regarding the reality of the conflict in Western Sahara and who make accusations and spread rumours, those are only leading to worsening the situation and engendering climates of tension and divisiveness in our region to the detriment of our peoples.
 
Creating fabrications and lies and the futile efforts to turn them into established realities represent a policy that has remarkably been doomed to failure. The peoples of the region and the world are surprised at seeing this policy being employed once again by claiming that the Saharawi refugee camps are witnessing anti-POLISARIO demonstrations and that they are living under conditions of repression and tension along with the futilely repeated use of expressions such as the “sequestered”, “mercenaries” and “separatists”.
 
The whole world, and especially the Moroccan Government, is very well aware that the Frente POLISARIO, as the sole and legitimate representative of the Saharawi people, is one of the two parties to the conflict in Western Sahara whose representatives met, at a high level, with the representatives of the other party and signed together the UN-OAU Settlement Plan and its additional Houston Agreements. 
 
The current policy pursued by the Moroccan Government, which is based on giving rise to an overall escalation for which all partisan and mass media are mobilised and in which it seeks to implicate the whole Moroccan society, does not serve the interest of the peoples of the region.  
 
There are evidently many important and urgent issues that could form the basis for a Moroccan national consensus, such as balanced development, democratisation, and respect for fundamental liberties and for international legality. The search for a consensus based on the gratuitous attack on the brotherly Algeria, whenever Moroccan Government faced difficulties and made more blunders in dealing with the question of Western Sahara, is not acceptable at all.
 
Furthermore, it is not acceptable that the Moroccan forces continue to violate the Saharawi human rights on daily basis, for it does not honour the Moroccan Monarchy at all to suppress the freedom of the Saharawis and violate their sanctities and oppress their human rights activists, nor can it be a victory or a courageous deed to kidnap and torture decent and peaceful Saharawi women.
 
The continuation of this policy may lead to dangerous consequences, including the possibility of your Government’s driving the region into war again, the engagement of Moroccan forces in horrible mass killings against defenceless Saharawi citizens such as those perpetrated in East Timor, or the eventuality of attaching a neighbouring country.
 
His Majesty,
 
The prospects for a peaceful option are crystal clear.  “The peace plan for self-determination of the people of Western Sahara”, known as Baker Plan, which was approved by the Security Council since its resolution 1495 (June 2003), and despite the concessions we had to make for the cause of peace, represents the only chance for reaching a settlement and overcoming the current deadlock that continues to prevent the peoples of the region from attaining their future that will be based on participation and integration, without any exclusion. 
 
Therefore, I would like to reiterate to you our constant readiness to engage positively in dialogue as long as it is within the framework of implementing the international legality on the basis of completing the decolonisation of the last colony in Africa through the respect for the principle of self-determination by means of holding of a free, just and fair referendum.
 
 
Please accept, His Majesty, the assurances of my highest consideration.
 
 
Mohamed Abdelaziz,
President of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic,
Secretary-General of the Frente POLISARIO. » (SPS)

020\090\100 061515 Jul 05 SPS

Brussels, 06/07/2005 (SPS) Saharawi Minister delegated to Europe, Mohamed Sidati, called on the European Union (EU) to intervene so as to help "the Saharawi population in distress", who are ruthlessly suppressed by Moroccan colonial forces in the Western Sahara. He further asked the EU to set up an investigation on human rights violations in the territories Morocco occupies since 1975.

In a letter he addressed to the Secretary General of the EU’s Council and High Representative of the EU’s Foreign Policy and Common Security, Javier Solana, the Saharawi Minister underlined that "it is incumbent upon the EU and its Member States to aid the Saharawi population in distress, and those people who are in danger". He added that Polisario Front expects that the EU "set up an investigation so that all the light is made on the tragic events which proceed in the Sahara Occidental".

Mr. Sidati recalled that since the last 21st of May, Saharawi population living under occupation "has been subjected to a ruthless and unprecedented repression carried out by the Moroccan authorities", via "violence, persecution and harassment" against persons who committed no crime but to demonstrated "and protested peacefully against the Moroccan arbitrariness, and called for the respect for their legitimate rights including the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination".

He stressed, in particular, the arrest of Mme. Aminatu Haidar, human right activist, who was abducted in 1987, when she was 20 years old to live the terrors of the Moroccan secret prisons (from 1987 to 1991). She was arrested again last June the 17th 2005, to live the worst ill-treatment again and to "suffer the purgatory of iniquitous judgements and prosecution by her Moroccan torturers".

"The reason for her arrest along with her fellows is none but her convictions, deemed “outrageous” by the occupier, which she has always proclaimed loudly, namely the support for the universally recognised right of the Saharawi people to self-determination and their exercise of it through a peaceful, free and democratic referendum", he said.

The fate Moroccan occupation reserves to Saharawi women and men such as Aminatu Haidar, "is an affront to the human conscience, and is an insult to the values of justice, democracy and of human rights that are defended by the European Union throughout the world", he put. Morocco, he said, "tramples on human dignity, pursues repression in Western Sahara without regard for the International Community or any respect for its own commitments".

To Mr. Sidati, the EU must "intervene immediately to compel Morocco to cease its ferocious repression practised indiscriminately against defenceless people and to demand it to release all Saharawi detainees and to put an end to its unfair trials".

"Europe is called upon to invoke the right of humanitarian intervention and to act in order to put an end to the colonial situation in Western Sahara and to the anguish of its people" and get rid of a partner "has the unfortunate reputation of being the second country in the world that does not respect UN resolutions, and has an appalling record with regard to violations of human rights in Morocco and above all in Western Sahara", he concluded. (SPS)

010/090/100/ALG/TRD 061755 Jul 05 SPS