Saharawi political detainees on unlimited hunger

[brim]

PRESS STATEMENT

Saharawi prisoner of opinion Ali Salem Tamek
Spokesman of the Saharawi political detainees on unlimited hunger
strike.

Ait Melloul prison, Agadir, Morocco

Saturday 24 September 2005

At the moment when the denunciations are intensifying, and more and
more increasingly urgent appeals for the immediate and unconditional
release of the Saharawi political detainees are being made, the
Moroccan government persists in its policy of distortion and playing
games to avert public opinion from the barbarous methods and the
crimes committed in the occupied territories of Western Sahara.

The Moroccan Minister for Justice, the real king pin in this policy,
serves as its main expression seeking to create erroneous views in theternational community concerning the Saharawi political detainees
who started an unlimited hunger strik45 days ago.

Untruthful words and fallacious statements have been made by the
Moroccan Minister for Justice in the columns of the paper "Aujourd'hui
le Maroc" (Morocco Today), where he declared quite shamelessly that
the Saharawi political detainees, Ali Salem Tamek, Brahim Noumria,
Mohamed Moutawakil, Lidri Houcine and Arbi Messaoud, who in his words
are not "political detainees or prisoners of opinion", were
transferred according to their own wishes to be closer to their
families, but who are in fact a thousand kilometres away from the
place they were transferred to.

The Moroccan Minister for Justice, who remains deaf to the legitimate
demands formulated by the Saharawi political detainees, has just
devised yet another scenario which consists in the sending of a
Moroccan delegation presided over by the Secretary General of the said
Ministry, accompanied for the occasion by official television. The
Moroccan delegation made its bizarre entry to the Black Prison of El
Ayoun only a few days after publication of humiliating photos of
Saharawi political detainees which one would say were from a black
horror prison, and which looked exactly like Nazi gaols.

These photos, which seem to belong to another era, were reported in
the Moroccan and international media, demonstrate in great detail the
inhumane and cruel prison conditions in which the Saharawi political
detainees live, subjected to torture, to summary trials, to daily
violations of human rights and constant humiliation of their families
who are not allowed to visit them.

These political detainees have taken recourse to an unlimited hunger
strike as the only way to have their rights recognised and this
despite the deterioration of their state of health and chronic
ailments from which the majority suffer, to protest against the trials
and tribulations of prison.

The decision taken by the instructing magistrate in El Ayoun court to
attribute the crime of taking the photos and their publication to a
Saharawi political detainee, Boulemiz Mohamed is just an completely
fabricated argument to put this detainee into a special prison, and
thereby to isolate him from the other detainees so as to subject him
to more torture. After the publication of the photos, a real folly has
gripped the Moroccan authorities who fear that it will create an oil
slick with unforeseeable consequences.

The Public Prosecutor (procureur général du Roi) should open, first an
inquiry to determine the grotesque overreactions and attribute
responsibilities to persons who have committed innumerable abuses
towards Saharawi political detainees.

The Moroccan authorities persist in turning a deaf ear and to keep in
prison arbitrarily political detainees whose life is in real danger
from the state of the inhuman conditions experienced in the prisons,
and from the unlimited hunger strike observed for over 40 days and the
chronic illnesses from which nearly all of them suffer. These Saharawi
political detainees are suffering on a daily basis and their life is
hanging by a thread.

The non-recognition by the Moroccan authorities of the most elementary
rights of Saharawi political detainees and the refusal to satisfy
their legitimate demands demonstrates once again the contempt of these
same authorities towards Saharawi political detainees.

The Saharawi political detainees pay well-deserved tribute to the
international community for its support and solidarity with their
struggle and salute on this occasion the Moroccan Association of Human
Rights (AMDH) as well as all the international organisations who are
fighting for the promotion of human rights.

- The Saharawi political detainees demand that the Moroccan
government puts an end to the systematic abuse of human rights of
which they are the target on a daily basis and to respect the treaties
and international conventions concerning political detainees.

- The Saharawi political detainees vigorously denounce the
inhumane practices aimed at Saharawi political detainees Tanjaoui,
Sbai Mohamed and Boulemiz Mohamed following the publication of images
which show the boundless cruelty undergone by all the Saharawi
political detainees in Moroccan prisons.

- The Saharawi political detainees demand an end to the
isolation of the Saharawi political detainee Boulemiz Mohamed and the
opening of an inquiry following the torture directed at him.

- The transfer by the Moroccan authorities of 72 Saharawi
political detainees from the Black Prison in El Ayoun on "Supratour"
buses and dispersing them into various Moroccan prisons and of the 40
political detainees from the prison of Aït Melloul to the civil prison
of Tiznit, including several Saharawis, arises directly from the
international disapproval following the publication of the horror
images taken inside the infamous Black Prison of El Ayoun.

- Finally, the Saharawi political detainees launch an urgent
appeal to all good consciences across the world to save their lives in
danger following arbitrary imprisonment and their extremely precarious
prison conditions