Several associations of Moroccans living abroad (MRE) organized, this weekend in Paris, a sit-in to warn about the inhuman living conditions and the atrocities committed against the Moroccan Sahrawis kidnapped in the Tindouf camps in Algeria. .
The demonstration, which brought together a large number of associations of Moroccan women residing in Europe and especially in France, intervenes to sensitize and alert public opinion and the international community to the violations of human rights committed in the refugee camps. Sahrawis in Tindouf.
The activists also launched this action to sensitize the French public opinion on the abject and inhuman crimes perpetrated against the Sahrawi community sequestered in Algeria, in particular their deprivation of their rights of liberty, mobility, access to health care and to conditions. worthy life.
Waving Moroccan flags and singing the national anthem in their mouths, the demonstrators, including several human rights organizations, called on the international community to take an interest in their Moroccan Sahrawi brothers taken hostage in the camps of fortune of Tindouf, where they undergo exactions, rapes and indoctrination under armed threat and with the approval of Algeria, host country.
Held in captivity for many years, the Saharawis, attached to their Moroccan identity, are thrown into secret jails while their children are subjected to brainwashing making them believe that their distress is caused by Morocco, at the time when it is the Polisario separatists with the help of Algeria who ensure that they live in poverty and cannot escape from these makeshift camps.
Under the influence, the children of Sahrawis are radicalized and join the armed militias of the Polisario from an early age, giving rise to new generations of indoctrinated rebel fighters.
These children are “sent to distant countries of the Caribbean and Latin America, not to continue their studies, but rather to undergo ideological indoctrination and military training,” said Ambassador Permanent Representative of Morocco to the United Nations, Omar Hilale.
Faced with this humanitarian disaster, the NGOs have called for the urgent release of detainees and captives from the Tindouf camps so that they can return to live in dignity in Morocco while the international humanitarian aid sent is diverted by the armed militias of the Polisario.
This call from Moroccan associations comes as new generations of terrorists are being created day by day in the Tindouf camps, thus creating a real security threat for the North African region, and especially at the borders with Morocco.
The UN challenged
Abuses and human rights violations in the Tindouf refugee camps have often been denounced before international bodies. In early March, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was questioned about Algeria’s responsibility in the situation prevailing in these camps.
Omar Zniber, the Ambassador representing Morocco to the United Nations Office, indicated that Algeria must not shirk its obligations and the provisions of international law and must ensure “safe and unlimited humanitarian access to the camps of Tindouf ”.
Algeria, which violates international provisions as a host country for refugee camps by letting criminal and militarized gangs take control of the camps “must cease in any way impeding humanitarian access to the Tindouf camps” Zniber added at the meeting of the High Commissioner’s Standing Program Committee.
For his part, during an international conference on “the protection of women during humanitarian crises”, Omar Hilale, the Ambassador Permanent Representative of Morocco to the United Nations, had indicated that he had warned about “the situation of our fellow citizens in the Tindouf camps in Algeria, where most of them are victims of sexual violence and slavery because of the color of their skin ”.
“Some continue their hateful approaches to our cause and intensify media crusades and diplomatic movements to undermine the process of definitive settlement of this artificial conflict and prolong the tragic situation in which the kidnappers, including women and children, live in the camps. of Tindouf ”, denounced the head of the Moroccan government Saad Eddine El Othmani.
The violence does not concern only the Saharawis but also the humanitarian and UN personnel there. “Last October, armed groups broke into the premises of the UNHCR (High Commissioner for Refugees, editor’s note) in Rabouni and publicly desecrated his flag in an act of provocation.”
During the same period, two Sahrawis from the Tindouf camps, Moha Ould Hamdi Ould Suelem and Ali Idrissi “were burned alive and in cold blood in a pit by members of an Algerian military patrol using blankets soaked in oil. ‘essence’, denounced the Saharawi activist Naji Moulay Lahsen during the 46th session of the UN Human Rights Council.
