Sahrawi organization denounces Morocco's action in Ceuta

Nan interview with the agency Lusa, in Lisbon, the president of the Association of Family of Prisoners and Disappeared Sarauis (AFAPREDESA), Abdeslam Aomar Lahsen, said that Rabat is therefore not able to give dignity to the population of the Western Sahara, where he intends to impose a solution of greater autonomy, under Moroccan control, to the former Spanish colony.

For Lahsen, Morocco, which has been recovering the solution presented in 2007 to give greater autonomy to the Western Sahara, continues to impede the holding of the self-determination referendum, agreed by both parties in 1991 under mediation of the United Nations.

As an example, he pointed out the human rights situation in what was a Spanish colony until 1975, considered by the UN to be a “non-autonomous” territory, and denounced serious violations that are going through forced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, torture and mistreatment.

“Morocco says he does not want the referendum, just an autonomy. To this day, no one knows what this autonomy is. If a territory is closed, if human rights are violated, if Morocco does not comply with the arrangements and treaties it has signed, as the Convention against Torture, a wall is maintained that divides the Sahrawi population, a wall that is mined with more than seven million mines, constantly monitored, how it wants to convey an image of modernity and openness” and ensure the autonomy of the Sahrawis, questioned.

For the President of the Sahrawi association, the solution is for the EU to implement the resolutions of both the institutions themselves and that of the courts, in particular the European Court of Justice, and the UN resolutions, “which have consistently confirmed the priority and the right to self-determination of the Sahrawi people”.

Lahsen stressed that the association he is presiding over, “over the 50 years of Moroccan occupation”, more than 30,000 arbitrary arrests, torture and abuse, as well as about 4,500 cases of missing citizens.

“Morocco has not yet given the definitive answers on the whereabouts of the 445 most recent cases. And as for political prisoners, it is rare to find a person in the Western Sahara who did not go through arbitrary detention. Morocco is using hybrid repression, which still uses arbitrary detention, torture and abuse, but reduces the number of people detained for a long period,” he added.

Lahsen also reported drone attacks in the south and west of the Western Sahara, “in the freed zone” near the Mauritanian border, the most recent causing two minor injuries.

“ Since 2022 we've registered 198 civilians killed because of the attacks. The dead are of different nationalities, Mauritanians, Algerians, Sudanese. They're shepherds, they're merchants, they're truck drivers, civilians that have nothing to do with the hostilities going on. In addition, we have a situation that makes the incredible, because a whole territory is surrounded under constant surveillance ", he said.

“ We have a wall, the largest, that divides the Sahara, which prevents the population from passing from one side to another. We've all left family in the occupied territories, we can't visit them. Even if they die, we can't go to the funeral. And this is also an extremely serious violation,” added the president of the Sahrawi association, recalling “the impediments” to independent visits to the terrain.

Morocco, with its support, especially from the United States, Israel and France, “he feels that since 2016 he can prevent the visits of the International Committee of the Red Cross to the occupied territories and that of representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Lahsen continued.

The former UN Special Reporter on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatments or Punishments Alice Jill Edwards, replaced on August 1, by Spanish psychiatrist Pau Pérez Sales, was twice prevented from carrying out missions to the Sahrawi territories, with the first to be refused under the pretext of the feast of the end of Ramadan and the second without any explanation.

Lahsen recalled that Morocco has also prevented the visit of journalists and international observers, including Members, some from Portugal, from different European countries.