SAHARA PRESS SERVICE

Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Canary Islands- Spain), 16/06/2005 (SPS) More than 200 persons, according to the organisers, organised a sit-in in front of the seat of the Canaries Parliament during its semi-monthly session, to condemn the fierce repression exerted by Moroccan colonial forces against the Saharawi population in occupied territories and in Morocco, reported the Coordination of Canaries Pro Referendum in the Sahara.

Demonstrators handed over a manifest to the Parliament’s members in which they demanded from the Canaries President "a firm attitude and decided in favour of a referendum on the self-determination and independence in Western Sahara" and to exercise the needed pressures on the Moroccan Government in order to "stop the repression and violence and to release the disappeared".

The document deplores that the autonomous Government "is encouraging multimillionaires investments in the Saharawi occupied territories by negotiating directly with Morocco, without considering the legitimate representatives of the Saharawi people and divert the attention when it comes to the defence of the values of independence, justice and human rights". (SPS)

010/090/666/TRD 161047 June 05 SPS

Paris, 16/06/2005 (SPS A French Senator, Nicole Borvo Cohen-Seat, Vice-President of the Committee on Laws, President of the Republican Communist Group and citizen in the French Senate, interpellated Moroccan Government to respect Human rights in Western Sahara and to enter a dynamic of a just settlement of the, "conforming to international law".

In a letter addressed to the Moroccan Ambassador in Paris, Mrs. Cohen-Seat recalled that Saharawi demonstrations in El Aaiun, Smara, Dajla "were repressed with a singular brutality. The photos we were able to see are a testimony on the violence of this repression". She underlined that "serious brutalities were committed against many persons".

"This human rights violation are deeply chocking and worrying us because it recalled a black period for freedoms. These deeds raise legitimate emotions and stress the need for Morocco to respect international conventions and UN’s resolutions regarding the question of Western Sahara, especially those that recommend the exercise by Saharawi people of its right to self-determination through a referendum within the framework of the UN’s settlement plan", she stressed in a letter of which SPS received a copy.

On another hand, the Senator expressed the hope that "this wave of repression is not a beginning of escalade in the confrontations and that authorities of your country (addressing Moroccan Ambassador-Ed) would take the urgent initiatives needed so as a peaceful process of settlement, which is just and conform to international law, can establish security, stability and lasting peace". (SPS)

010/090/666/TRD 161112 June 05 SPS