SAHARA PRESS SERVICE

El Aaiun (Western Sahara), 26/06/2005 (SPS)A delegation of Andalusan parliamentarians and representatives of civil society was expulsed Sunday from the El Aaiun’s airport by the Moroccan colonial authorities, who denied it the entry to the territory like three other Spanish delegations that preceded it.
 
Submitted to a permanent state of siege since 1975 and closed to observers and foreign journalists, the Saharawi territory continues to be a theatre to bloody confrontations between Saharawi demonstrators who claim for the independence of their country and colonial authorities who answer by repression and terror. A situation that foreign observers are trying to check in vain.
    
The delegation is composed by Andalusan parliamentarians from the first Spanish opposition party, the Popular Party (PP), Begona Chacon, a parliamentarian of the Unified Left (Isquierda Unida -IU – in Spanish), Ignacio García, a Professor of Public International Law in the University of Malaga, Alejandro Carrión, a Professor of social anthropology in the University of Seville, Isidoro Moreno, the Secretary General of the Trade Union of the Workers of Fields (SOC), Diego Cañamero,  the President of the Andalusan Federation of the associations of solidarity with the Sahara (FANDAS), Francisco Guerrero, and the President of the Associations of the friends of the Saharawi people in Seville, Fernando Peraita.
 
The parliamentarian of the IU, Ignacio Garcia, estimated in a statement to Spanish press agency Europa Press that "some thing really serious must have happened". He underlined that the Government of Zapatero must "review its relations with Morocco because there are motives to doubt about it".
 
On his part, the Secretary General of the SOC, Diego Cañamero, indicated that what happened was expected because there is "a dictatorship in an occupied territory" and "it is certainly hiding something" (…) "it is hiding aggressions, tortures, injured persons, siege and the absence of freedoms", Europa Press quotes.
 
This is the fourth delegation Moroccan colonial authorities expulses from El Aaiun’s airport. "It seems that they have something to hide", a local official from Madrid said, who was one of the members of a delegation composed of parliamentarians from Madrid Moroccan authorities expulsed last June the 5th..

A second delegation composed of Catalonian Parliament members basically was expelled to Canary Islands last June the 8, the members of the delegation were not allowed to get off their plane, while another delegation from Asturias was expulsed last June the 19,it should be recalled.

Since the 21st of May, violent confrontations between Moroccan forces of repression and Saharawi people, who were claiming for the respect of human rights and their rights to self-determination and independence.

The confrontations resulted in dozens injured people, prisoners and disappeared in El Aaiun, Smara, Boujador, Dajla (Western Sahara) or in Rabat, Marrakech, Agadir, Casablanca (Morocco), it should be recalled. (SPS)

010/090/666 261710 June 05 SPS