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UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Navi Pillay
Palais des Nations
CH-1211 Geneva 10
Switzerland

Copenhagen 11. October 2011

Actions needed to protect Saharawi citizens

For over three decades, the Moroccan government has violated the human rights of Western Sahara’s indigenous population, the Saharawis. But the situation of the Saharawis in the occupied territories of Western Sahara has deteriorated markedly in recent months and years – particularly after a peaceful protest was brutally and violently suppressed by Moroccan police and armed forces last November in Agdaim Izik. This protest was the largest ever Saharawi protest in the occupied territories and showed the growing frustration of the Saharawis in the occupied territories.

The thousands of protesters had merely wanted to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the appalling conditions that they live under, as well as with Morocco’s denial of their economic, social and political rights that in effect makes them second-class citizens in their own country while Morocco, supported by the EU, plunders their natural resources.

More recently, on 25 September of this year, Moroccan settlers aided by security forces attacked Saharawis who were demonstrating peacefully for their UN-sanctioned right to self-determination in the occupied city of Dakhla. The assassination of Maichan Mohamed Lamin Lehbib, a 28-year-old Saharawi activist, was a direct result of these attacks, as was the serious injuries to several women, children and elderly citizens among the demonstrators. Furthermore, twenty-five of the demonstrators are still missing, many young Saharawis have been arrested, and houses belonging to Saharawis have been pillaged and their cars and belongings burnt.

But the most recent example of repression by the Moroccan occupying forces took place yesterday in the occupied City of Aaiun. Moroccan security forces brutally attacked Saharawi demonstrators, and as far as can be established at least 30 Saharawis have been wounded and many others have been arrested, among them:
- Saltana Khaya
- Dahba Sidamou
- Ambarka Andour
- Manina Lamghaimad
- Salama Nafi Lakhal
- Azarwali Yaslem
- Andourouha Bouzeid
- Alhatra Aram
- Haimouda Fatma
- Brahim Breighn

Additionally, Moroccan forces have once again brought about a virtual media blackout in Western Sahara and the cities of Dakhla and Aaiun remain under virtual military siege.

Africa Contact, a Danish NGO and solidarity organisation, believes that the Moroccan colonisation of Western Sahara is a political and historical anachronism, as well as being both legally and morally reprehensible. As a consequence hereof, and because of the above mentioned examples of sustained Moroccan brutality towards the civilian population of occupied Western Sahara, we have campaigned for the independence for Western Sahara for several years.

Africa Contact demands:

• Condemns the sustained repression by Moroccan settlers and security forces, and calls on Morocco to immediately halt its brutal treatment of civilians in occupied Western Sahara.
• Demands that the UN protects Saharawi civilians against the repression and human rights violations committed by Moroccan settlers and security forces.
• Demands that the UN implements an independent international investigation into the grave human rights violations perpetrated by Morocco in the occupied cities of Dakhla and Aaiun.
• Urges the Government of Morocco to release the twenty Saharawi human rights activists arrested after the crackdown of the protest Camp Agdaim Izik last year and who are now in Sale prison near Rabat waiting to be presented to military court.
• Urges the Government of Morocco to release all the  Saharawi political prisoners who languish in various Moroccan prisons.
• Believes that the current situation in the occupied areas clearly demonstrates the urgent need for the inclusion of human rights monitoring in the mandate of MINURSO.
• Expresses our continued solidarity with the people of Western Sahara in their struggle to gain the right to self-determination.

Best Regards

Morten Nielsen
Africa Contact

Cc: Mr. Villy Søvndal, Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs
Cc: Amnesty International- Denmark branch

This letter was issued by the Danish NGO Africa Contact (Western Sahara
Group). We are committed to raising awareness of the plight of the
Saharawis and their UN-sanctioned right to a referendum on the issue of
self-determination for Africa’s last colony.