SAHARA PRESSE SERVICE

Bir Lehlu (liberated territories), 20/10/2005 (SPS) Saharawi Government does not have the intention to threaten American’s interests and less American citizens, indicated a written statement by the Saharawi Executive, SPS received.

"The Government of SADR and Polisario Front, who call to the respect of the international legality, reiterate that they do not have the intention to threaten neither he American citizens nor the American interests and reaffirm their condemnation of terrorism in all its forms", the statement underlines.

"The struggle Saharawi people is waging, for more than 30 years, is a clean national liberation struggle that is conform to the international legality and to UN’s resolutions which recommends the exercise by the Saharawi people of its right to self-determination and independence", the text stresses. (SPS)

SPS
SADR/SPAIN/UN

Brahim Ghali: Walsum must specially compel Morocco implement UN’s resolutions

Madrid, 19/10/2005 (SPS) Saharawi Representative to Spain, M. Brahim Ghali, reiterated on Wednesday that the conflict of Western Sahara is a question of uncompleted decolonisation, estimating that the mission of the UN’s Secretary General’s Personal Envoy, Peter Van Walsum, consists initially in deploying all necessary efforts to compel Morocco implement UN’s Security Council’s resolutions calling for the organisation of a self-determination referendum in Western Sahara.

"Western Sahara question is a decolonisation issue and thus the doctrine of the UN on the matter must be implemented", affirmed Mr. Ghali, in reference to a declaration of Ambassador Walsum, in which he considered that the positions of the parties to the Western Sahara conflict are "almost irreconcilable".

"It is not a matter of reconciliation the parties, it is a question of implementing the international legality. We are in front of a situation where there is an invader and an invaded, an aggressor and an aggressed, a coloniser and a colonised", the Saharawi diplomat stressed in a statement to Algerian Press Agency, APS.

Saharawi people "suffers since 30 years, because the international community did not assume its responsibilities. The prolongation of the sufferings of a whole people is an unforgettable crime", he deplored.

The Saharawi delegate underlined that if in the next period of prorogation of the MINURSO mandate with no perspective of solution to the conflict, that takes consideration of Saharawi people’s right to self-determination, POLISARIO Front will be forced "to seriously reconsider the attitude it adopted these last years", stressing that this reflection would not exclude the possibility of resuming "armed struggle".

The President of the Republic, Mohamed Abdelaziz, reaffirmed the attachment of Polisario Front to a peaceful solution to the conflict of Western Sahara, during his discussion with the UN’s Secretary General’s Personal Envoy for the Western Sahara, Ambassador Peter van Walsum, last Friday the 14th of October at the Presidency, underlining that "Baker Plan remains the optimum political solution" for the decolonisation of Western Sahara, indicated the Saharawi Minister of Information, Sid Ahmed Batal to SPS.

"The implementation of thee peace plan is from now on a challenge the UN is to take", Mr. Abdelaziz has said, expressing the preoccupation of he Polisario Front about the lack of political will in Morocco, "who is still refusing to implement UN’ Security Council and General Assembly’s resolutions regarding the conflict", the same source added. (SPS)

060/090/700 201624 Oct 05 SPS

SPS
OCCUPIED TERRITORIES/POLITICAL PRISONERS/HUNGER STRIKE

Saharawi political prisoners resume to their hunger strike todays

El Aaiun (occupied capital of SADR), 20/10/2005 (SPS) Saharawi political prisoners in the Carcel Negra (Black Jail) in El Aaiun decided to resume to their unlimited hunger strike, they have suspended temporarily last September the 29th after having fasted for 51 days, because of the "escalade in the Moroccan repression against the political prisoners and their families", and so as to denounce the lack of will of the Moroccan Government, which did not respect its engagements towards the hunger-striking prisoners to satisfy their claims, indicated a press release publicised by the detainees Thursday.

"Since the 17th of October, the penitentiary’s authorities of the Carcel Negra in El Aaiun opted, anew, to the escalade aiming at deprive us from all our acquisitions by adopting measures and acts of violence against the prisoners and their families", the press release underlined, what pushed all the Saharawi political prisoners in this prison to declare their decision to resume to hunger strike this Thursday the 20^th of October.

The signatories of the press release reported many violations against their rights by the Moroccan authorities, who did not hesitate to encourage the guardians and torturers of the prison to "attack the political prisoners, chanting chauvinist slogans against the Saharawi people, torturing sole of us and they even imprisoned three political prisoners in the cell of isolation", the press release added.

"Even our families, who come to visit us, were not saved from this repression. They were victim to an attack from the agents of the Moroccan Group of Urban Security (GUS) causing many injured persons", the press release indicated referring to the brutal intervention of the Moroccan authorities against a peaceful demonstration organised last Monday by the families of the political prisoners in front of the Carcel Negra.

Starting their hunger strike last August the 8th, to claim for the respect of the fundamental liberties in Western Sahara and their people’s right to self-determination as well as their rights as political prisoners, the 37 Saharawi political detainees had temporarily suspended their hunger strike, which continued for more than 50 days last September the 9^th in the different Moroccan prisons, in the Carcel negra in El Aaiun, Oukacha Prison in Casablanca and the local prison of the Moroccan city of Ait Melloul, it should be recalled.

The hunger-strikers, who suffered a lot from this struggle, renewed their "attachment to the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination and call upon the United Nations to expedite the implementation of this right", as well as their appreciation of "the massive solidarity movement with the hunger strikers that involved all the Saharawi population everywhere as well as significant international organisations", they underlined in a press release declaring their decision to suspend the hunger strike then.

"The open-ended hunger strike and the risks it involved in terms of the risk of death and attendant disabilities was only waged in response to the persistence by the Moroccan State in abusing human rights, engaging in sacrilegious practices, and attempting to subdue the Saharawis through its ongoing policies of repression, detention, torture, unfair court trials and abduction even from within prisons, which all is reminiscent of its military invasion and annexation by force of the Saharawi territory at the end of 1975", the text added. (SPS)

060/090/000 202337 Oct 05 SPS