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SPS A UN human rights delegation expected in El Aaiun from 17th to the 19th of May 15.05.05
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Geneva, 15/05/2006 (SPS) A delegation from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights delegation is expected in the occupied city of El Aaiun from the 17th to the 19th of May to investigate on the human rights situation widely violated by Morocco since its colonial occupation of the Western Sahara in October the 31st 1975, before visiting the Saharawi refugee camps from the 20th to the 23rd May.
A visit, that intervenes on the recommendation of the U Secretary General, Kofi Annan, in his last report represented last April the 18th to the UN Secretary general, in which he expressed his concerns about the human rights situation in the Western Sahara, the Non-Self-Governing territory put by Rabat under a military siege, including by a military wall erected since the early eighties dividing the territory and its people in two parts.
"Arbitrary arrests, imprisonments, deportations, tortures, iniquitous trials, blind repression are the daily life of the Saharawi populations since the occupation of the territory, especially sine the starting of the uprising last May 2005", noted the Saharawi Jurists Union (UJS) in a press release.
This visit, so much asked for by the Polisario Front in many letters sent by the President of the republic, Mohamed Abdelaziz, to the Un Security Council and U Secretary general, will enable the President of the UN’s delegation, Christophe Girod, and the members of the same the German, Mrs. Karin Lucke, Coordinator of the Region of the Arab World, and the Lebanese, Roueida El Hage, in charge for North Africa, to investigate on the "tragedy of this people under colonial domination, in a territory that is submitted for more than a quarter century to a security and military siege", according to UJS. (SPS)
010/090/000/TRD 151223 May 06 SPS
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SPS In her visit to Spain, Mrs Haidar arrives to the Basque country
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Bilbao (Basque country), 13/05/2006 (SPS) Mrs. Aminetou Haidar, famous Saharawi human rights activist and ex-political prisoner, arrived on Sunday to Bilbao, the third stage of the visit she is undertaking since the beginning of the week to the Spanish autonomous regions.
IN the same city, Mrs. Haidar had had meetings with the ex-President of the Spanish Committee for the assistance to the refugees (CEAR), Mrs. Maria Jésus Arsuaga, as well as it current President, Mr. Javier Galparsor.
She informed her interlocutors about the situation of the human rights and the repression to which the Saharawi citizens are subjected to in the occupied territories of the Western Sahara, especially "the Saharawi human rights activists", adding that she "has a big respect for the solidarity of the Basque country with the Saharawi cause ".
Mrs. Haidar, has lately received the "Juan Maria Brandes" Price of the Defence of the right to exile and solidarity with refugees that was offered to her by the Spanish Committee for the Assistance to the Refugees (CEAR), was also received by the President of the Catalonian Agency for Cooperation, David Minovc, and by the Coordinator of the Catalonian solidarity with the Saharawi people, Oriol Fort, in addition to Catalonian sympathisers with the Saharawi cause.
39 years old and mother to two children, Mrs. Haidar was arrested for the first time in 1987 for having participated in a peaceful demonstration against the Moroccan illegal occupation of the Western Sahara at a moment when a UN’s ad-hoc Committee was visiting the territory.
She disappeared for 4 years in the Moroccan secret detention camps, undergoing all kinds of torture before been released in 1991. She was arrested many times because of her peaceful activities for the defence of the human rights in the Western Sahara, which is submitted to the Moroccan military occupation and to a permanent Medias and security siege since 1975.
Release last January the 17th 2006 from the notorious Moroccan prison the Carcel Negra (Black Jail) in El Aaiun after she served a 7 months sentence, Mrs. Aminetou Haidar participated to many activities such as to the Committee of Coordination of the victims of forced disappearance and detention in the Western Sahara in 1994, the Committee for the release of Sidi Mohamed Deddech and all Saharawi detainees in 2002, an the Committee for the release of Ali Salem Tamek and all the Saharawi political prisoners in 2003.
Her appeal from the Carcel Negra on the occasion of the International Day against torture is impossible to forget:"...It is a miracle that I am still alive, because I am physically exhausted as a woman by all these years of forced disappearance and imprisonment, so much torture and repression. But I am still here and I will continue to fight with all my energy knowing that you are there struggling with us. I am convinced of this as I am convinced of the existence of the sea that is awaiting for me some 25 kilometres, and as I am convinced that these Saharawi children refugees in Algeria will come back to their free land. I am even more convinced of your support and of the tender sight of my own children, Mohamed and Hayat for whom I am badly missing". (SPS)
020/090/000 151140 Mai 06 SPS
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