SAHARA PRESS SERVICE

Diret (liberated territories), 24/04/2004 (SPS) A demonstration that gathered tens of political figures and citizens coming from all the Spanish autonomous regions, elected officials from Emilia Romano region (Italy), and some Greeks and Germans had demonstrated on Saturday in Diret (south-west), in front of a section of the wall of shame, which is separating Saharawi families, to claim its dismantling and to exhort UN to organise, with no more delays, a referendum for the self-determination of Saharawi people.

«Morocco, colonialist, get out of the Sahara », «we will dismantle this wall», « Zapatero, listen, Sahara is struggling», or « UN, your resolutions are aberrations », are some of the main slogans loudly claimed by the demonstrators who had crossed some 350 Km of gruelling roads in the liberated territories to reach the place.

Members of autonomous parliaments, local counsellors, mayors and presidents of associations of friendship with the Saharawi people from Spain, took part to this action, the third of its kind in less than three months, and which intervenes after an Italian march (February) and an Australian (March).

Organised by the Federation of the Supporting Institutions to the Saharawi people (FEDISA) and the International Association of Jurists, the demonstration, to which Saharawi women of neighbouring nomads camps and from refugees camps had also participated, also aims at been a platform to denounce «the Moroccan permanent obstruction to the UN's peace plan», stressed Mr. Carmelo Ramirez, Mayor of a Canaries archipelago town, during an improvised meeting on the ground, some 300 meters of Moroccan soldiers, who were guarding the wall.

Mr. Ramirez asserted that «this wall is a shameful building that prevents Saharawis from returning to their homeland», accusing Morocco of «systematically violating human rights of Saharawis who are living in the occupied zones» and denouncing «Un's passivity and incapacity in enforcing 30 of its resolutions», in relation with the decolonisation of Western Sahara.

«We have lots of hopes in Zapatero, but we would like to tell him, while he is in the other part of the wall, that we hope that one day he will come to visit the part in which Saharawis are living», underlined the President of the Coordination of the Associations of Solidarity with Saharawi people, José Taboada.
 
Under a very hot sun, the demonstrators, and the platform « culture against war » chaired by the actress, Marisa Paredes, erected a symbolical monument made of flat stones, on which they engraved their names to immortalise this event in front of the cameras of many televisions and other Medias that had accompanied the event. (SPS)

010/090/000/TRD 242157 Apr 04 SPS