Are you HAPPY with this??

[brim]

An appeal from Sidi Mohamed Dadach, The Rafto Prize winner
2002

An appeal from Sidi Mohamed Dadach, The Rafto Prize winner 2002

Since May 21st,2005, the Western Sahara, southern Morocco and some Moroccan cities, where Sahrawi students are studying, have been fields of peaceful demonstrations of the Saharawi people calling for their right to self-determination and independence, and demanding the Moroccan state to pull out of the occupied territories of the Western Sahara.

The Moroccan state has excessively repressed the non-violent demonstrators by different kinds of security forces such as the Urban Security Group (GUS), the Auxiliary Forces, the “National” security and the
Mobile Companies of Intervention (CMI).

The Sahrawi demonstrators were savagely tortured, some of them disappeared and some others arrested. Up to the present, more than a hundred injured people have been declared in El Ayun only, about 30 political
prisoners and about ten houses were looted by the Moroccan forces agents. All these crimes have been perpetrated in less than a month.

On June 17th, 2005, there was a new perilous tendency of the Moroccan state to target the human rights activists in order to prevent them from reporting the Moroccan atrocities committed against the Saharwis to the
outside world. These atrocities took place in El Ayun, the capital of the Western Sahara, Smara, Dakhla, Assa (southern Morocco) and in some Moroccan cities like Rabat, Casablanca, Fes, Marrakesh and Agadir. The Sahrawi students studying in these Moroccan university cities were barbarously tortured, verbally abused and illegally arrested.

The human rights activists are particularly targeted by the savage repression that is still increasing. Aminatou Haidar, an ex-disappeared and courageous activist in the women’s rights domain, was violently tortured in public in Smara street, El Ayun on Friday, June 17th, 2005. She was arrested the same night as she was getting out of the hospital. The injuries on her head and back are causing her health troubles as the Moroccan authorities refused to seriously cure her (apart from some preliminary treatment) nor give her a medical certificate to prove the aggression.

The situation of the Sahrawi people is alarming, especially that there are no political or media delegations to report the Moroccan atrocities. Therefore, I appeal to all to exert pressure on the Moroccan state to respect the Sahrawis' right to self-determination and
independence, and to allow an international delegation to investigate the latest crimes committed by the Moroccan forces against the defenseless
Sahrawi citizens.


Sidi Mohamed Dadach, The Rafto Prize winner 2002,

El Ayun, Western Sahara, June 24, 2005.

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Les soldats marocains faits prisonniers en Algérie auraient dû être libérés dès l'acceptation du cessez-le-feu, signé en septembre 1991.

Mais "le Polisario, pour qui les Marocains constituaient à la fois une main d'oeuvre servile et un moyen de pression, en a décidé autrement", relève Jeune Afrique / l'intelligent.

"Longtemps, les indépendantistes ont essayé de lier leur sort à la tenue du référendum d'autodétermination (...) avant de céder à la pression internationale en libérant, au compte-gouttes, par tranches de 100 à 200, les plus âgés et les plus malades", note l'hebdomadaire, ajoutant que certains soldats des Forces Armées Royales ont fini par être élargis après avoir passé vingt-huit ans dans les camps, "dans des conditions effroyables, au coeur d'un des déserts les plus inhospitaliers du monde. Deux cents environ sont morts en captivité", précise-t-il.

"Les camps de Rabouni et de Tindouf n'ont pas grand chose à envier aux camps de concentration", souligne l'hebdomadaire, citant un rapport de France Libertés, pourtant proche du Polisario.

"Traités comme des bêtes de somme, obligés de dormir en plein air, dans les tranchées qu'ils avaient eux-mêmes creusées, nourris de quelques bols de soupe de lentilles de pois chiches, servis dans des brouettes sales, buvant de l'eau saumâtre distribuée dans des bidons rouillés, les prisonniers de guerre ont vécu un véritable calvaire", selon ce rapport.

"Sans chaussures, ni parfois vêtements, hormis un pantalon sale, ils travaillaient à des cadences infernales. Déplacés au gré des travaux effectués,ils sont à l'origine de l'essentiel des infrastructures civiles et militaires construites à Rabouni", ajoute le journal, citant le rapport de la Fondation de Danielle Mitterrand.

L'hebdomadaire recueille dans cet article les témoignages de plusieurs soldats et officiers marocains détenus depuis près de trente ans dans les camps du Polisario.

En dépit de toutes les résolutions et conventions internationales, poursuit le journal, "les autorités d'Alger ont toléré et tolèrent encore que leurs protégés du front polisario, maintiennent sur le territoire algérien des camps de détention".
23 juillet 2005