Smara (occupied territories), 22/03/2006 (SPS) Big demonstrations were organised on Tuesday by the Saharawi students in the occupied city of Smara, within the framework of the demonstrations rejecting the visit of Mohamed VI, the king of Morocco, to the Western Sahara and to advocate the Saharawi people’s right to self-determination, reported the correspondent of the SPS on the ground.

Demonstrators raised the flags of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic and chanted slogans advocating the immediate withdrawal of the Moroccan occupation from th occupied territories and the independence of the Western Sahara, the same source added.

The Moroccan colonial forces oppressed the demonstrators using truncheons and dogs, purchasing the Saharawi students who were peacefully demonstrating against the visit of the Moroccan king, the symbol of the Moroccan colonial occupation, to their territory, the same source added.

The Moroccan authorities arrested the Saharawi citizens, Sid Ahmed Brahim Lebreiki and Abeida hamoudi, while a 1 years old child, Mohamed Boukhari Mseini, was tortured and ill-treated by agents, the same source indicated.

In parrallel to these demonstrations against the visit undertaken by the Moroccan king, Mohamed VI, to the occupied city of El Aaiun, the Moroccan authorities of occupation increased their forces with more than 40 military trucks in the streets of the occupied city of Smara, and multiplied the patrols of the different units of the GUS, CMI, auxiliary forces, gendarmerie and royal armed forces (FAR), the same source indicated.

10 persons at least were wounded and 11 houses ransacked by the Moroccan police on Monday, in the occupied city of Smara, after demonstrations organised by the Saharawi population to express their rejection of the visit of Mohamed VI to the Western Sahara and to advocate the immediate withdrawal of the Moroccan occupation and the Saharawi people’s right to self-determination and independence, the correspondent of the SPS on the ground reported.

Mr. Khalil Sidi M'Hamed, Minister of the Occupied Territories and Communities, asked the UN to intervene so as to "protect the Saharawi civil citizens, who are victims to these abuses and to grant them the respect of their fundamental freedoms until the decolonisation of their territory". (SPS)

020/090/110 2212130 Mars 06 SPS 

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Chahid El Hafed, 22/03/2006 (SPS) 21 trucks transporting more than 349 tons of food and medicaments in favour of the Saharawi refugees are expected in the refugee camps on Friday, which were stroke last February by floods and torrential rains having destructed more than 50 per cent of the camps structure.

This aid, which departed on Tuesday morning from the Algerian city of Constantine, was collected by committees of the Algerian Red Crescent of the region, the mayoralties, donators, and associations of Constantine, Jijel, Mila, Oum El Bouaghi and Khenchela.

Mr. Beissat Mohamed Yeslem, Ambassador of the Saharawi Republic in Algiers, reported by the Algerian Press Agency, APS, attended the departure of this caravan, and hailed "the impulse of solidarity of the Algerian people" that he qualified as "generous and always faithful to their constant principles and to the steady support to the Saharawi people".

This caravan comes within the framework of the activities of solidarity impulsed by the Algerian Committee of Support to the Saharawi people (CNASPS), and will arrives on Thursday to Tindouf to be delivered to the Saharawi Red Crescent on Friday. (SPS)

010/090/700/TRD 221810 Mar 06 SPS

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Rabat, 22/03/2006 (SPS) The situation of the human rights "remains bad in Morocco" with the persistence of excessive use of violence, arbitrary arrests, persecution against African immigrants and repression against the Saharawi activists in the occupied territories of the Western Sahara, indicated the USA State Department.

In its March 2005 report on the human rights in Morocco and publicised on Tuesday by the USA Embassy in Rabat, the USA State Department underlined that the ''the situation of human rights (in Morocco) remains bad in many levels".

The USA State Department, which referred to international human rights organisations’ reports, accused the Moroccan Government of "excessive use of force in the occupied cities of El Aaiun and Dakhla (Western Sahara) against the Saharawi activists", in lat May and last autumn.

With regards to the repression in the Western Sahara, the same report severely criticised "trials that followed (these pro-independence demonstrations) and the severe sentences against the Saharawi activists".

The report recalled that "human rights activists from the Western Sahara had declared to the Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch that they were tortured" by the Moroccan forces of occupation after they were arrested.

On another hand, the violent and disproportioned repression against peaceful demonstrations committed by the Moroccan forces against the Moroccan civil society was also reported by the American report, according to which ''the excessive use of force in intervention caused the death of demonstrators''. (SPS)

010/090/700/TRD 221833 Mar 06 SPS

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Madrid, 22/03/2006 (ASS) The Representative of the Polisario Front to Spain, Mr. Brahim Ghali, qualified on Tuesday the visit of the king of Morocco, Mohammed VI, to the occupied territories of the Western Sahara as a "defiance" to the international community and as a "provoking, irresponsible and colonialist manoeuvre aimed to hinder the process of the decolonisation of the conflict".

"This visit reflects an attitude representative of colonial regimes when they are submitted to pressures by the international community to resolve conflicts", Mr. Ghali underlined during a press conference.

HE stressed that the visit of the king Mohammed VI "is on another hand irresponsible" since it intervene few days before the presentation by the UN’s Secretary General, Mr. Kofi Annan, of his report on the conflict of the Western Sahara and the starting of the debate within the UN’s Security Council on the same question.

"This is a defiance to the Security Council, to the MINURSO (UN’s Mission for the organisation of a Referendum in the Western Sahara) and to the international public opinion", the Saharawi diplomat affirmed, noting that the Moroccan kin "can not get rid of the UN, the MINURSO and the will of the international community".

Mr. Ghali denounced "the brutal repression" and the "intensification of the policy of ethnic extermination" in the occupied territories that preceded the visit of the king. He stressed that some 160 persons were arrested and that Saharawi citizens’ houses were ransacked on Sunday and Monday in the occupied capital of the Western Sahara, El Aaiun an in Boujdour.

"99 % of the persons, gathered in the streets of El Aaiun (upon the arrival of the king) are Moroccans", he affirmed, adding that "the Moroccan regime can not live without provoking conflicts with his neighbours, because it is in constant need of diverting the attention of its citizens from their real interior problems to the exterior".

The Saharawi diplomat called on the Spanish Government "to openly denounce" he visit of the Moroccan king to the Western Sahara, recalling that the official position of Spain is "that any solution to the conflict must be based on the self-determination, conforming to the UN’s resolutions".

He further reiterated "the complete rejection" by the Polisario Front of the Moroccan plan of autonomy which is "a manœuvre against the international legality an an attempt to alter the nature of the conflict that was defined as an uncompleted process of ".

"The UN has qualified the Western Sahara as a Non-Self-Governing territory that is submitted to a process of decolonisation", he recalled.

"We demand that the conditions enabling the exercise by the Saharawi people of their right to self-determination within the framework of a free and transparent referendum be granted", he said, warning that if the process of settlement is not concluded by a self-determination referendum the Polisario Front "will be forces to reconsider other options".    

"The armed struggle is a right that is recognised by the international community. We continue to favour the peaceful way. But if we can not exercise our legitimate right to self-determination we will unfortunately be forced to give additional sacrifices", he said. (SPS)

010/090/700/TRD 221725 Mar 06 SPS

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