Marrakech (Morocco), 15/10/2005 (SPS) Saharawi Students in Marrakech organised a sit-in, on Thursday in the University of Marrakech, in solidarity with the Saharawi population in Boujdour, who was oppressed the same day, according to eye witnesses contacted by SPS.

The Saharawi students claimed for the withdrawal of the Moroccan colonial forces from their land, as well as for the right of their people to self-determination and independence. They chanted slogans calling for the decolonisation of their country, such as "no alternatives other than self-determination", "in the occupied territories a volcano is raging", and condemning the systematic repression erected in a system by the regime of Rabat against the Saharawi population since its military invasion of the Saharawi territory in 1975, the same sources indicated.

On another hand, the demonstrators called the UN and the international community "to urgently intervene so as to put an end to the Moroccan human rights violations in the occupied territories of Western Sahara and to pay the necessary efforts so as to guarantee Saharawi people their inalienable right to self-determination", underlined a press release the Students distributed during the sit-in.

Reaffirming their "attachment to the legitimate rights of Saharawi people", Saharawi students called the international community to pressure Morocco so as to release "immediately and unconditionally all Saharawi political prisoners", who are still in detention and are suffering because of the terrible conditions of detention in the notorious Carcel negra (Black Prison) in El Aaiun.

39 persons were injured and 12 arrested among Saharawi demonstrators, Thursday in Boujdour (occupied territory) after confrontations with the Moroccan colonial forces which intervened to disperse a sit-in claiming for the organisation of a self-determination referendum of the Saharawi people and the respect of the human rights in Western Sahara, it should be recalled.

Many of these injured persons are now in the hospital of the city, while their families were forbidden from visiting them and were brutally dispersed in front of the entry of the hospital, where they were gathering, while one of the victims, Hamadi Toueir, was transferred in emergency to Hospital BelMehdi in El Aaiun, because he was seriously injured in the head.

On another hand, the forces of occupation ransacked more than 7 houses and robed the goods of their owners, while a truck of the Group of Urban Security (GUS), which was sent from El Aaiun to participate to the repression, hit the car of Saharawi citizen, Ahmedou Najem, who was kicked and brutalised by truncheons after he got alive from the accident. (SPS)

060/090/000 151436 Oct 05 SPS

Bir Lehlu (liberated territories), 15/10/2005 (SPS) Polisario Front declared that it succeeded in rescuing 92 African illegal immigrants, transported from the north of Morocco and abandoned in the middle of the desert by the Moroccan authorities, indicating that they are now gathered in Bir Lehlu (East of the Western Sahara), and to whom the first medical cares were given besides food and clothes, stated a Saharawi Governmental source.

From different African nationalities, these persons affirm that they were forced by the Moroccan armed forces to go in the desert under the threat of weapons in different points of the Moroccan military wall, erected in 1986 from the north to the south to part Western Sahara and its people in two.

Research operations, which are undertaken since last Tuesday by unities from the Saharawi army, are very difficult because of the big distances to cover to trace the immigrants, who were parted in different groups by the Moroccan army and forced to the desert from different points of the military wall filled of mines, it was indicated.

Three days ago, Polisario Front alerted the UN's Mission for the organisation of a referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), which is on the ground since 1991, especially in the locality of Bir Lehlu, and which visited these immigrants, the same source added.

The survivors of the desert, who are in a lamentable physical and psychological state, can be visited at any time in this locality for all those who feel concerned or want to bring them help or assistance, the Saharawi Government declared.

To the Saharawi Government, "Morocco must be sanctioned for these inhuman practices", estimating that if urgent international measures are not adopted to back the efforts of search to save, feed and provide shelter to these persons, who  were condemned to death by Rabat, and then to repatriate them to their countries in circumstances that guarantee their security and dignity, we will be faced by a human tragedy".

In a letter to the UN's Secretary General, Kofi Annan, the President of the Republic, Mohamed Abdelaziz, warned about the dangers that threaten the lives of thousands immigrants who are transported by Morocco from the north of the kingdom towards the desert zones of Western Sahara, calling the UN to intervene so as to stop this tragedy.

Western Sahara is a territory that is "under the authority and responsibility of the United Nations, represented by its Mission for the organisation of a self-determination referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO)", the President underlined, calling Annan to "intervene urgently so as to put an end to the practices of the Moroccan Government, which put the lives of the illegal immigrant in danger". (SPS)


010/090/100/TRD 151441 oct 05 SPS 

<> <>up