SPS OCCUPIED TERRITORIES/INTIFADA/HUMAN RIGHTS The Collective of Saharawi Human Rights activists calls on the UN to help release the 37 Saharawi hunger-striking Saharawi political prisoners

El Aaiun (occupied territories), 14/09/2005 (SPS) Collective of Saharawi human rights’ Defenders in the Occupied Territories of Western Sahara addressed a letter to the UN’s Secretary General and to the 15 permanent member of the UN’s Security Council asking them to help release the 37 hunger-striking Saharawi political prisoners. It gave a gloomy testimony on the human rights’ situation in the occupied territories of Western Sahara. 

Here is the English translation of the letter: 

"Collective of the Saharawi human rights’ Defenders

in the Occupied Territories of Western Sahara
Letter addressed to:

The UN’s Secretary General

and

The 15 permanent of the UN Security Council’s member States.

Excellences,

Since last May the 21st 2005, Saharawi population in El Aaiun, the occupied territory of Western Sahara, organised many sit-in and demonstrations of protest against the Moroccan occupation, claiming for the right to self-determination and for the respect of human rights. These sit-in and demonstrations were brutally suppressed by the different corps of Moroccan repression especially the Auxiliary Forces (Paramilitary forces), The CMI (Mobile Companies of Intervention) and GUS (Urban Groups of Security). Saharawi demonstrators, who were savagely brutalised during the sit-in and demonstrations, were denied medical care by Moroccan authorities and Moroccan medical services working in the hospitals of the city.

Saharawi houses, their furniture included, were sacked by Moroccan forces of repression. Many of these houses were evacuated of their owners by force and remained occupied for days by Moroccan forces using them as bases of control and as points from where to fire tear-gas bombs. Campaigns of arrests and abductions targeted old persons and youngest, women and children and even the whole members of some families were abducted. Dozens of the arrested Saharawis were submitted, in the different stations and places of the Moroccan police, to the most savage methods of physical and psychological torture before been abandoned in the cabbages or in the surroundings of the city of El Aaiun, while others were presented before Moroccan justice. 

In solidarity with their compatriots, Saharawis in other cities of the occupied territories of Western Sahara (SMARA, BOUJDOUR and DAKHLA) and in cities south Morocco (GOULIMINE, TAN TAN and ASSA) organised demonstrations and sit-in claiming Saharawi people’s right to self-determination, such demonstrations were always atrociously repressed by Moroccan police. Likewise, Saharawi students in Moroccan universities in (Agadir, Marrakech, Casablanca and Rabat) organised sit-ins of solidarity in their universities’ campus in solidarity with their compatriots. During these sit-ins they expressed their complete rejection of Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara and demanded the holding of a self-determination referendum that would enable Saharawis to freely decide over the definitive status of their country. Moroccan authorities violently repressed these peaceful campaigns of solidarity, sometimes even did so before of international Medias cameras.

 

Many international journalists and TV reporters, who came to report the on the situation in the occupied territories of Western Sahara were expulsed by the Moroccan authorities even before they could go through the international zone in the El Aaiun airport. Likewise, many delegations of foreign and independent observers, who came to investigate on the situation and human rights violations committed by Moroccan authorities during the peaceful demonstrations that claimed for Saharawi people’s right to self-determination, were also denied entry to the territory. Actually, Western Sahara is under total military, media and security siege and the Saharawi civil population live under terror propagated by the multiple Moroccan forces of repression. 

New forces of the Moroccan repressive corps coming from Moroccan cities enter the occupied territories of Western Sahara continuously to reinforce the military siege and repress the peaceful Saharawi movement that claims for self-determination conforming to the UN’s resolutions. 

Meanwhile, intimidations are exerted against Saharawi human rights activists and 07 of them were arrested. Saharawi human rights defenders, who escaped arrest, are put under very close surveillance by the Moroccan secret services and they are forcibly stopped from doing their duty of reporting the serious human rights violations perpetrated by the Moroccan authorities against the Saharawi civil population and demonstrations to the international public opinion. 

Excellences,

In his speech to the Moroccan people, last July the 30th 2OO5, the highest authority of the Moroccan  State has implicitly given the green light to the Moroccan forces of repression to intensify their campaigns of suppression against Saharawi human rights defenders and Saharawi demonstrators, who claim for self-determination and for the respect of human rights. This same authority (the King of Morocco- Ed) hailed the mobilisation within the Moroccan chauvinists who normally called on the Moroccan State to eradicate, without mercy, all form of Saharawi peaceful movement that claim for Saharawi people’s right to self-determination and human rights respect. 

Actually 37 Saharawi political detainees, including 07 human rights activists, are incarcerated and parted in three prisons where they are living under deplorable conditions of detention. They were savagely tortured in Moroccan cells of the PC of the CMI and PC of the GUS in El Aaiun to force them give information. T interrogatories were supervised by the highest officers of the Moroccan police in the occupied territories o Western Sahara. One of the activists was even interrogated, in the principal Brigade of the Moroccan police, by the General Director of the Moroccan Security, who did not stop insulting the victim, the Saharawi activists and uttering racist expression against Saharawi people.

These acts intervene at a moment when the UN’s Commission against torture is still awaiting for Morocco’s official engagement regarding the respect of the international Convention against torture. During discussions and auditions of Morocco by the commission the exercise of torture in the occupied territories against Saharawis was one of the subjects for which Morocco was asked to provide answers and explanations.

Excellences,

Whilst the international human rights’ organisations, in particular Amnesty International and the World Organisation against Torture, are calling on Morocco to release Saharawi political prisoners and to open investigations on allegation of torture exercised by Moroccan forces of repression against Saharawi political detainees, Moroccan authorities continue exercising these same abuses, with complete indifference in the face of the multiple requests for the respect of human rights the international community launched. Further, they illegally deported some Saharawi political detainees to prisons inside Morocco and continue threatening some of them of transfer to psychiatric clinic. 

To protest against their deplorable detention conditions (heavy sentences of imprisonment during iniquitous trials, ill-treatment and torture they underwent during interrogatories undertaken in Moroccan police official places and in Moroccan secret cells, brutal transfer from the prison of El Aaiun in the occupied territories of Western Sahara to prisons inside Morocco) 37 Saharawi political detainees, including 07 Saharawi human rights activists, are undertaking an unlimited hunger strike since last August the 08, 2005. The state of health of the hunger-striking Saharawi political detainees is seriously deteriorating while the Moroccan authorities continue showing their total indifference regarding the legitimate claims of the strikers.

Excellences,

Concerned by the alarming human rights’ situation in the occupied territories of Western Sahara, the Collective of Saharawi human rights’ Defenders in the Occupied Territories of Western Sahara calls upon you and solicits your firm intervention vis-à-vis Moroccan authorities so as to:

•        Save the lives and immediately and unconditionally release all Saharawi political detainees (see annexed list),

•        Present Moroccan officials who are accountable for ill-treatment, or exercised torture against Saharawi political prisoner, before of court,

•        cooperate with the International Committee of the Red Cross regarding the revelation of he fate of the 151 Saharawi prisoners of war Morocco still detains. 

•        Account for 526 Saharawi 'disappeards', whose cases are recorded by international human rights organisation.

•        Respect human rights in the occupied territories of Western Sahara,

•        End the military, security and media siege that is imposed on the occupied territories of Western Sahara since its occupation in the 31^st of October 1975.

Excellences,

We believe that you are conscious that this alarming situation of human rights in the occupied territories of Western Sahara is no more than the direct consequence f the political and military conflict the territory is living since its occupation by Morocco in 1975. This situation requires then an urgent intervention from the free nations so as to protect Saharawi people and demand the respect of their legitimate rights. For this end, the the Collective of Saharawi human rights’ Defenders in the Occupied Territories of Western Sahara calls on you to do all you can to put an end to the sufferings of the Saharawi people, and this can be through the adoption of resolution that demands:

•        The enlarging of the mandate of the UN’s Mission for a referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), to include the human rights level,

•        The nomination of a special reporter on the human rights situation in the occupied territories of Western Sahara,

•        The constitution of an international commission of investigation on the human rights abuses and violations committed by the Moroccan authorities against the Saharawi civil society,

•        The enforcement of the Peace Plan for the Self-determination of the People of Western Sahara, which was approved by the UN’s Security Council in July 2003.

Finally, we would like, on behalf of all Saharawi human rights activists in the occupied territories of Western Sahara to express you our most deep esteem and high considerations for the noble work you are achieving for the sake of peace and for the promotion of brotherhood between the peoples of the world.

 Done in El Aaiun, occupied territory of Western Sahara
 09 September 2005                                                                  

List of Saharawi political detainees on hunger strike
1. Aminatou Haidar
2. Mohamed Elmoutaoikil
3. Brahim Noumri 
4. Elhoucine Lidri
5. Hmad Hammad
6. Elaarbi Messoud
7. Ali Salem Tamek
8. Bougarfa Abderrahman
9. Lahcen Zrayguinate
10. Hassanna Elhairach
11. Bouaamoud Mohamed Salem
12. Daoudi Omar
13. Baba Elaarabi
14. Hammadi Elkarcha
15. Alouate Sidi Mohamed
16. Bachir Baba
17. Ndour Elhoucine
18. Elhafed Toubali
19. Abdelaaziz Dai
20. Nafaa Bouchama
21. Alamine Bada
22. Shreih Hamou
23. Slami Mohamed Salem
24. Daaki Mohamed
25. Moussaoui Sid Ahmed
26. Mohamed Mahmoud Fak
27. Ahmed Mahmoud Hadi Kainan
28. Mahmoud Moustapha Haddad
29. Hadi Shrief Ahmed Fal
30. Hassana Meki
31. Rashid Mohamed Bahia
32. Shtioui Mahdjub
33. Balla Sidi Mohamed
34. Tahlil Mohamed
35. Djenhi Khalifa
36. Houeid Mahmoud
37. Wali Admidan".