SAHARA PRESSE SERVICE

Chahid El Hafed, 30/12/2005 (SPS) The Saharawi Government qualified, on Friday, as "untrue and dishonest" the allegations spread Wednesday by Moroccan official press agency, MAP, according to which "a certain Mr. Claude Moniquet, president of a European would-be centre of research, ESISC, was supposedly threatened of death by a Polisario Front’s sympathiser", affirmed the Saharawi Minister of Information, Mr. Sid Ahmed Batal, in a statement to SPS.

The Saharawi Minister affirmed that this information "is no more than a new untrue and dishonest attempt by the MAP and this Mister, who seems to have chosen the bad methods to get famous by inventing allegations and spreading false information about the Polisario Front, the Saharawi national liberation movement, which has never made use of such methods that contradict its principles and contradict the history of its legitimate struggle for the self-determination and independence of Western Sahara".

On another hand, he condemned "the abounding propagation of grotesque lies, about the legitimate struggle of the Saharawi people, adopted as a medias policy by the Moroccan Government, which persists in turning its back to the international legality and continues on oppressing the Saharawi civil population in the occupied territories of Western Sahara and south of Morocco, who are leading a peaceful popular uprising there since last May". (SPS)

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SPS
SADR/EUROPE/SOLIDARITY

Hundreds Europeans and Algerians in a visit to the refugees camps in solidarity with the Saharawi people’s cause

Chahid El Hafed, 30/12/2005 (SPS) Hundreds Spaniards, Italians, French and Algerians chose to spend their Christmas holydays with the Saharawi refugees, "to give evidence on their support and solidarity with this people that was chased from its homeland, Western Sahara, since its invasion in 1975 by the Moroccan military army", indicated a source from the Saharawi Protocol Department, contacted by SPS.

Basically composed of members of European families from the different Iberian regions, Italy, France and other European Countries in addition to local elected officials, representatives of NGOs, intellectuals, journalists, hundreds of the friends of the Saharawi people chose to spend their Christmas holidays within the Saharawi families in the refugees camps, "as a signal of solidarity and as a human support to the legitimate struggle of the Saharawi people for their self-determination and independence", the same source underlined.

"We already received over 200 Spaniards, 70 Italians and 180 Algerians, and hundreds other friends will come this evening in charter flights", he added.

This few days visit is "full of emotion, solidarity, human encounters, cohabitation between the different cultures and religions, and also full of the rejection and condemnation of the Moroccan colonisation of Western Sahara that have caused an unlimited tragedy for thousands of kids, women, old people in this land of exile, famous of its desert and inhospitable nature, according to the visitors themselves”, the same source said.

It should be noted that over 5000 European visitors, divided in two groups of 2000 the first and 3000, one in December and the other in April, in addition to hundreds journalists, searchers, observers and NGOs representatives, visit the refugees camps every year.

Besides being a tradition and a mean of solidarity with the Saharawi cause, these visits became an opportunity for official delegations and representatives of groups of solidarity and associations to contact the Saharawi institutions for partnerships and projects to be executed in the Saharawi refugee camps, it was indicated. (SPS)

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