AFAPREDESA
The Association for the Families of Saharawi Prisoners and the Disappeared
UN mission to the Western Sahara’s programme filled with meetings with fictitious NGOs
The Moroccan colonial authorities established, in advance, a programme
filled with meetings with fictitious NGOS and puppet bodies created for
the occasion by the colonial administration to mislead the UN mission that
will start a 3 days visit to the occupied territories, on the demand of
the UN Secretary General, Kofi Anan, to investigate on the human rights
violations in the Western Sahara.
El Aaiun (occupied territories), 16/05/2006 (SPS)
"Unless they will be prudent, the international employees risk to lose a lot of time in official meetings with fictitious NGOs and other ramifications of the Moroccan colonial administration prepared weeks ago for this purpose", adverted a Saharawi human rights activist contacted by SPS, who asked for anonymity from the Saharawi occupied capital.
He fears that the Moroccan authorities "do not allow the UN mission to get to the streets to get in touch with the population", or to get in touch with the families of the victims of the Moroccan repression.
The activist, suggests to the members of the mission, chaired by the Swiss Christophe Girod, instead, to "gain time so as to deepen their investigation, by refusing to move to the other cities like Smara or de Dakhla", because, he stressed, "El Aaiun can be a testimony on the extent of tragedy lived by this part of the Saharawi people under Moroccan occupation for more than 30 years".
The Saharawi human rights activist, who is willing to meet the UN mission, indicated on another hand, that the Moroccan authorities, within the framework of the preparations to receive the UN mission, "deployed battalions of auxiliary forces to seal the popular neighbourhoods in El Aaiun". They even "invaded some schools, while others completely exchanged their military uniforms by traditional Saharawi clothes, knowing that the prices of these types of clothes raised considerably before they completely run out from the market ".
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ delegation, which arrived on Monday to Rabat, will move this evening to El Aaiun in order to investigate on the human rights situation, which is seriously degrading since the Moroccan colonial invasion of the Western Sahara in October the 31st 1975. The delegation will then move to the Saharawi refugee camps from the 20th to the 23rd of May.
A visit, that intervenes on the recommendation of the U Secretary General, Kofi Annan, in his last report represented last April the 18th to the UN Secretary general, in which he expressed his concerns about the human rights situation in the Western Sahara, the Non-Self-Governing territory put by Rabat under a military siege, including by a military wall erected since the early eighties dividing the territory and its people in two parts.
So much asked for by the Polisario Front in many letters sent by the President of the republic, Mohamed Abdelaziz, to the Un Security Council and U Secretary general, this visit will enable the President of the UN’s delegation, Christophe Girod, and the members of the same the German, Mrs. Karin Lucke, Coordinator of the Region of the Arab World, and the Lebanese, Roueida El Hage, in charge for North Africa, to investigate on the "tragedy of this people under colonial domination, in a territory that is submitted for more than a quarter century to a security and military siege", according to UJS. (SPS)