News

Peace Plan 1: UN rollover to May
Meeting on the 26th March, the UN Security Council took just 3 minutes to adopt Resolution 1469 (2003), which extends MINURSO’s mandate in Western Sahara for another 2 months, to 31st May 2003, in view of the fact that “not all the parties have provided their views on the proposal” that was brought to the parties in January by James Baker, Kofi Annan’s Personal Envoy. While all the consulted parties missed the 1st March deadline for submitting their comments, at the time of the Security Council session it was just Morocco that was yet to submit. According to POLISARIO Front sources, this is a regular tactic of the Moroccan government, who perhaps hope to learn something of the content of other parties’ submissions before finalising their own.

Peace Plan 2: Morocco says no!
Finally, on 27th March, the Moroccan press reported that Morocco has rejected Baker’s proposals as being “incompatible with the territorial integrity of the Kingdom”. If this can be taken at face value, it would seem that both the POLISARIO Front and the Government of Morocco have rejected the proposals.

Western Sahara in Westminster
The first parliamentary meeting on the Western Sahara in a year passed off successfully last week. A number of MPs and NGO representatives were addressed by Lehbib Breica of the POLISARIO Front, Tess Kingham (ex-chair of the Western Sahara All Party Group) and Jenny Tonge MP (Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for International Development). There were also contributions from a number of activists and journalists who had visited the Saharawi refugee camps and territories under Moroccan occupation recently.

Human Rights – Daddach & others refused permission to travel to Europe
Citing their “hostility to the territorial integrity of the Kingdom”, the Moroccan authorities prevented a delegation of 13 human rights campaigners and relatives of Disappeared persons from travelling to Geneva to participate in the UN Commission on Human Rights and a weekend of events arranged by BIRDHSO. The group arrived on time at Casablanca airport, only to have their tickets, passports and visas confiscated and themselves forcibly removed from the airport.

Human Rights – hunger strikes nearly bring tragedy for Tamek
Ali-Salem Tamek, jailed national council member of the Forum for Truth and Justice, came close to death on the weekend of 21st March following 10 days of hunger strike. His hunger strike was launched following the refusal of the Moroccan prison authorities to deliver on promises to allow him visitors on weekends and improved conditions of detention, and after an attempt on his life in prison and regular torture by other prisoners went uninvestigated by the authorities. It should not be forgotten that Tamek is viewed as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, who . demanded his immediate release in December of last year. His rather modest demands - for visits on weekends, visits by journalists and human rights groups, an end to the authority-sanctioned beatings and an investigation into how a fellow prisoner came into possession of a knife and tried to kill him – proved hard to swallow for the prison authorities.

It was not until he was rushed to hospital unconscious and near to death, a development that brought protests from around the world, that the prison management relented and agreed to:
- see that the acts of intimidation he was being subjected to by guards and fellow detainees stop,
- open an enquiry in collaboration with the judicial police into the attack he suffered on 31 January,
- authorise the visit of doctors of his choice in collaboration with the Forum for Truth and Justice,
- authorise visits from foreign personalities, in coordination with the Forum for Truth and Justice and on condition that a request is made beforehand,
- study the possibility of authorising visits on public holidays and Saturdays provided a request and the list of visitors is given beforehand.

As a result, Tamek ended his hunger strike – and is now back in Sale prison, hoping that the authorities keep their promises….

Human Rights – more heavy sentences on flimsy pretexts
Following the 10 year sentences handed down to Salek Bazaid and colleagues two weeks ago, another Saharawi, Ahmed Bachir Ahmed Sbai, was also sentenced to 10 years for the same charges, namely, conspiracy to burn down a police station in El Ayoun. Following the fire last summer, the Moroccan authorities initially blamed Saharawi youths, an explanation which had some plausibility, although needless to say they rounded up scores of young people for questioning in an effort to wring every drop of intimidation out of this opportunity. However, the people who will now be in Moroccan prisons until 2013 for this arson attack are middle-aged family men, who “by coincidence” are all involved in human rights work!

Human Rights - freedom of expression in Morocco?
Following the appearance of leaflets and SADR flags in all the Saharawi towns and those of southern Morocco since 27.02.03, Saharawi former political detainees were summoned in Tan-Tan by the police and submitted to interrogation, and house searches.

Meanwhile, in Rabat, 3 days of activities planned by Saharawi students in solidarity with Saharawi Political Prisoners were banned by the Moroccan authorities. They instead held a march on the University campus in protest at this infringement of their rights.

Overview: the “Moroccan mafia” speak out for “human rights”

There are fascists pretending to be humanitarians

Like cannibals on a health-kick eating only vegetarians

(Roger McGough, poet)

Last weekend saw a long-planned meeting between Saharawi human rights campaigners, and relatives of the disappeared, and European campaigners and adoption-campaign members in Geneva, organised by BIRDHSO (International Bureau for the Respect of Human Rights in Western Sahara).

Evidently alarmed at the progress being made by human rights campaigners, the Moroccan authorities did their best to wreck the weekend. As well as preventing the delegation from the occupied territories from attending, as reported above, they also organised counter-demonstrations and disruptions. The official Moroccan press agency (MAP) has presented these events as noble and popular efforts by Moroccan human rights campaigners to confront the hypocrisy of what they write as “polisario” with regard to alleged human rights abuses in the Saharawi refugee camps. The reality was somewhat different, of course. On the Friday, the BIRDHSO demonstration outside the UN outnumbered the “Moroccan Sahara” one by 3 to 1. On Friday evening, Saharawi human rights campaigners turning up to a “Moroccan Sahara”-organised meeting on “torture in Tindouf” found that they were the only people in the audience! MAP also attempts to claim the ceremony in the Garden of the Disappeared for the pro-Moroccans: the reality is that two Moroccan agents watched from a discreet distance.

As to the Saturday night public meeting, a meeting entitled “for the disappearance of Forced Disappearance in Western Sahara”, a group of 10-15 pro-Moroccans turned up bent on disrupting the programme of the meeting and causing maximum confusion among members of the public. Some of the group claimed to have been tortured in the Saharawi refugee camps. Afifa Karmous of France-Libertes confirmed that her organisation would listen to all accusations; but that the reports submitted by those present consisted only of vague allegations and lengthy repetitions of the Moroccan government’s position on Western Sahara. And this is no surprise when these people’s activities were clearly being co-ordinated by five burly, besuited and scowling “human rights activists” – spelt m-o-r-o-c-c-a-n s-e-c-r-e-t p-o-l-i-c-e . Indeed, outside the University of Geneva lecture theatre a Saharawi ex-prisoner spotted the number 2 of a Moroccan detention centre he had been tortured in…. the man, who had been giving directions to his colleagues inside the room, took off on being confronted with his true identity. The pro-Moroccans circulated the room shouting at the speakers and at one point tried to physically grab the microphones from the panel including the representative of Amnesty International, France-Libertes and AFAPREDESA (Saharawi NGO).

The affair recalled the words of Frank Ruddy, US representative to MINURSO during the 1990s, who resigned in protest at the UN’s inaction in the face of the Moroccan security forces’ abuse of the voter identification process. “They behaved atrociously” he said, “these guys were the mafia”. And fortunately, for all their attempts at disguise, it’s never too hard to recognise the mafia when you see them.