Tindouf camps : Human Rights Watch’s worries

During a TV show, broadcasted by the Iranian TV Press TV, the regional director of Human Rights Watch, in charge of human rights issue in the Middle East and North Africa, has been deeply worried about the situation of human rights in the Sahrawi camps in Tindouf, in the South-West of Algeria.
The Sahrawi people living there, deprived of everything, despite the huge quantities of the international aid sent to the camps, cannot even talk nor feel free to express themselves about their daily life or give a simple opinion. Those who talk to the international press are jailed and persecuted. Furthermore, The director of the North-South review has insisted on reminding, still in the same TV show, Morocco’s recovery process of the Sahara, following the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (CIJ) and the tripartite Agreement of Madrid, between Spain, Morocco and Mauritania, filed in the United Nations as an official document.

He then recalled the impossibility of organizing a self-determination referendum for the Western Sahara peoples, taking into consideration the tribal and clan antagonisms and the complexity of determining the voting Sahrawis, following the practical difficulty of implementing territory belonging parameters, in view of the nomad nature of the Sahrawi tribes and their progressive and lasting life in the neighboring countries, mainly Morocco and Mauritania, without forgetting the land realities since 1975 and the Sahrawis’ births in the decolonized territory. He has also reminded the support of the Arab League members to the Moroccan claim for the recovery of the Sahrawi provinces colonized by Spain, including Algeria. The Algerian volte-face is dictated by political calculations and an obsolete geostrategic vision. Since 1975, date of Morocco’s recovery of its Saharan territory, Algeria has changed its stand and has deliberately become a destroyer of Morocco’s territorial integrity, supporting to the end the Polisario Front , providing it with training and arms and defending it in the international institutions to the extent of creating serious troubles in the Maghreb region risking a frontal war with Morocco. This inept and dangerous situation of Algeria has made it difficult to find a fair and perennial solution to an issue that has heavily burdened the region countries’ economy and has durably mortgaged any emerging of the Big Maghreb wished by all the peoples of the region. A political problem between two sister countries and neighbors, worsened by fears, resentments and outside longing, while honorable solutions exist!

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