SAHARA PRESSE SERVICE

El Aaiun (occupied territories), 29/07/2005 (SPS) Saharawi human rights activist, Aminetou Haidar, launched an urgent appeal, fro, her cell in the Black Prison in El Aaiun, to the USA Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Condoleeza Rice, asking for her intervention vis-à-vis of the Moroccan colonial authorities to release her with her other compatriots arbitrarily arrested and heavily sentenced after the Intifada of independence that started last May in the occupied territories.

A defender of human rights since 187, Aminetou Haidar, effectively participated in the struggle for the respect of human rights in the Western Sahara. Since her release from secret detention in 1991, she has been an active member to many committees for the defence of prisoners. She was subject to harassment and continuous acts of intimidation from the Moroccan authorities. She was periodically subjected to interpellations, confiscation of car and interrogatories.

Here is the complete text of the letter translated from Arabic to English by SPS:

The Honorable Dr. Condoleeza Rice,
Secretary of State of the United States of America,
Washington, D. C.

Dear Madam Secretary,

When I had eight years I did not understand why Moroccan soldiers were storming into my city, nor did I understand why there were kidnapping and arresting Saharawi citizens and why there were committing crimes against innocent people by burying them alive or dropping them from helicopters.

When I was twenty years old, I realized that Western Sahara, my usurped homeland, was a question of unaccomplished decolonization that had been registered at the Untied Nations since the sixties, and that the United Nations endorsed the struggle that the Saharawis were waging for their inalienable right to self-determination. In 1987, when I went out to demonstrate peacefully for the defense of this legitimate right, the Moroccan soldiers, exactly as they had done with my fellows in 1974, kidnapped and detained me in that horrible centre known as PC-CMI where I remained disappeared for more than four years during which I was subjected to unspeakable sorts of torture and ill-treatment that I find difficult to describe in these few lines.

After thirty years of the Moroccan illegal military occupation, and after thirteen years of my release from that dreadful detention center, during which time I was subjected to harassment and persecution, and when the entire world became one global village at a time when it was widely believed that Morocco was effectively on its path towards the establishment of a state that respects law, right and fundamental liberties, after all this hundreds of Saharawi citizens and human rights activists took to the streets in El Aaiún, the Saharawi occupied capital, to demonstrate peacefully to demand the immediate exercise by the Saharawi people of their right to self-determination in accordance with the dictates of international legality and respect for fundamental liberties, as well as to claim for the release of all Saharawi prisoners of conscience.

The entire world was utterly shocked to see the brutal and oppressive practices that were immediately deployed against those who were demonstrating peacefully for independence. It was indeed outrageous to see those cases of beating, torture, kidnapping and detention which were followed by unfair and astonishing sentences passed on those citizens who demonstrated peacefully for legitimate demands. I would like to mention, just as a few examples, the cases of Hassan Heirish who was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, Dawdi Omar and Bouamoud Mohamed Salem who both were sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. What an injustice that which was inflicted on Mr. Abderahmane Bougarfa, aged 53 and a family provider for 10 children and their mother, who were sentenced to 5 years imprisonment!

As for me, I have always been advocating the rights of the Saharawi people by legal and peaceful means until I was arrested on 17 June 2005.

The Moroccan occupying forces subjected me to degrading treatments and I was savagely beaten which led to my sustaining injury on the head, not to mention my serious health situation that was already a result of the four years of my forced disappearance. Before I was able to receive the necessary medical care, I was arrested at the hospital and taken to be interrogated and then to be detained in the notorious “Black Prison”.

Despite my deteriorating health situation, I am still deprived from seeing my two small children, Hayat and Mohamed Ghasimi, while I am in the jail, given that I did nothing but demonstrate peacefully and publicly for legal and legitimate demands that are enshrined in all international conventions including the Constitution of the Moroccan State, which continues to occupy illegally Western Sahara.

It seems that the Moroccan State has no intention to cease its oppressive escalation. It continues to impose a tight siege and to deny access by international observers to the occupied city of El Aaiún, while expelling from it delegations that came to express their human and moral solidarity with the Saharawi victims of Moroccan oppression. All this is being done with the presence of massive military and security forces and the “berm” that is a crime against humanity as it continues to divide Western Sahara into two halves by a barrier of more than 2000 Kilometers fortified with troops, military hardware, ditches and millions of mines.

Along with unfair court trails, the Moroccan State has also been engaged in kidnapping and detaining Saharawi human rights activists who had already been jailed in Moroccan detention centers including Ali Salem Tamek, Mohamed Moutawkil, Laarbi Massoud, Hussein Lidri and Brahim Noumria. These last two, who remain jailed in the “Black Prison”, had already been beaten and tortured on the wake of the peaceful demonstration that took place on 21 May 2004. They were also subjected to all sorts of torture, which we thought were already outdated, at the same horrible detention center, PC-CMI that evokes for me and other Saharawi men and women ghastly memories.

Madame Secretary,

I am addressing you as an aggrieved women who is deeply touched by the abuse and injustice that is being done not only to Saharawi women and people in general but also to the values of human civilization at large. The Saharawis are very sensitive as to what harms their dignity and the dignity of women in particular, considering that Saharawi women continue to enjoy great freedoms and a prominent status in the traditional culture and society within the context of the state modernizing project that has been set in motion by the Frente POLISARIO as the sole and legitimate representative of the Saharawi people and of their legitimate national aspirations.

Rest assured that the values of democracy, tolerance, open-mindedness, religious co-existence, freedom of religion, respect for fundamental freedoms such as freedom of _expression and freedom of movement, aversion to terrorism and all kinds of violence as well as racial or ethnical discrimination, all these are deep-rooted values of the Saharawi society that remains determined to defend them, despite all the injustice and denial of its internationally recognized right.

In 1975, I did not understand why the Moroccan soldiers were arresting and exterminating my fellows, but now, in 2005, I understand that the Moroccan authorities are engaged in a brutal repression against the defenseless Saharawi citizens who demonstrate peacefully and the human rights activists, the symbols of peace and advocates of enlightened human rights activism. However, I cannot understand the silence of the world of today, the world of the one global village, of respect for human and peoples’ rights in the face of these brutalities, gross violations and crimes against humanity.

From my isolated cell, I address your Excellency, while having great hope in you and your country that represents freedom and respect and advocacy for human rights, in order to intervene urgently to deliver me from the darkness of this unfair detention together with all my mates the prisoners of conscience and human rights activists. It is high time that you lead the international community to engage in a serious action to ensure the respect for international legality and the implementation of the resolutions of the UN General Assembly and the Security Council regarding Western Sahara by giving the Saharawi people a small and legitimate chance to go to the ballot boxes in order to decide their future by means of a free, fair and just referendum.

For freedom, justice, respect for human and peoples’ rights and for peace, stability, mutual respect and neighborly relations between the Saharawi and Moroccan peoples, I appeal to you to dedicate just a moment of your precious time to pay due attention to the situation of a defenseless people that is fighting, with courage and determination, for those same noble values and ideals that underpin the United States of America, which continue to defend them unwaveringly.

Yours sincerely,
Aminatou Haidar,
Prison number: 26232
Done on 26 July 2005,
At the “Dark Prison” in the occupied city of El Aaiún,
The Occupied Territories of Western Sahara." (SPS)

060/090/MAZ 292117 Jul 05 SPS

SPS
SPAIN/EU/SADR/NATURAL RESOURCES
The EU-Morocco fishing accord is "illegal and unfair", affirms Mr. Brahim Ghali

Madrid, 29/07/2005 (SPS) Polisario Front’s Representative to Madrid, Mr. Brahim Ghali, considered, Friday, that the fishing accord signed in Brussels between the European Union and Morocco, which included the territorial waters of Western Sahara, was "illegal and unfair" and is in "flagrant" contradiction with international law.

In a statement to Algerian Press Service, APS, Mr. Ghali recalled the legal opinion issued in 2002 by the UN’s under Secretary General for legal affairs, Hans Corell, which stipulates that any exploitation of the natural resources of Western Sahara is a "violation to international legality", as long as the decolonisation of the non-self-governing territory is not completed through the organisation of a "democratic and transparent" referendum on self-determination.

This accord, the Saharawi diplomat underlined, "does not contribute to the political solution of the conflict, nor does it contribute to peace and security in the region and hinders the action of the new Personal Envoy of the UN’s Secretary General to Western Sahara, Pieter Van Walsum, in the search of a just, lasting and definitive solution", the same source said.

He added that the reference of the European negotiator, Cesar Deben, to the tripartite Accords of Madrid 1975 confirms, in fact, the illegal nature of the UE-Morocco’s accord because "conforming to the resolution 26-25 of the UN’s General Assembly, Spain did not have the required legitimacy, in 1975, to pass the non-self-governing territory she was administrating and on which she was not exercising any kind of sovereignty" to an other country, he affirmed.

The Madrid’s Accords, he said, were signed in contradiction with the article 53 of the Convention of Vienna on the Law of Treaties of 1979.

"The Article 53 of this Convention, to which Spain is a party, decides the nullity of any treaty that opposes, at the moment of its signing, an imperative norm in the international law", he put.

"The Accord on fishing is thus a participation of the European Union in the plundering of the natural resources of Western Sahara", regretted Mr. Ghali.

The Saharawi delegate hoped that the European Parliament "freezes" the implementation of this accord until the definitive solution to the conflict is found, and thus contribute to the efforts deployed by the international community for this end.

Mr. Ghali also regretted that the Spanish Socialist Government has played a "determining role" in the conclusion of this accord. "We launch an appeal to the Parliament, political parties and Spanish public opinion to work with us so as to stop the implementation of this accord", he declared (SPS)

060/090/700/ALG/TRD 291829 Jul 05 SPS