A protest sit-in demanding the truth the "disappeared" in Polisario camps, was organized Wednesday in front of the United Nations System Resident Coordinator in Rabat.They also demand the corpses of those who perished under the torture of the "Polisario" separatists and the Algerian State,
The sit-in was organized by the National Association of the Martyrs, Disappeared and Sequestered persons in the Moroccan Sahara.
Since 1976, Morocco and Algeria have been at loggerheads because of the latter's support of the "Polisario Frente" separatist movement, which claims the separation of the Moroccan southern provinces (the Sahara) from the rest of the north African kingdom.
In mid-August 2004, the Polisario released 402 Moroccan prisoners of war some of whom had spent over three decades in the Polisario-run Tindouf camps, Algeria. The separatists are still sequestering thousands of Moroccan sahrawis who they had lured into joining the camps after Morocco retrieved the Sahara from the Spanish rule in 1975 under the Madrid Accords signed with Madrid and Nouakchott.
The Rabat sit-in also addressed a message to UN S.G. Kofi Anan through the office of the UN system coordinator in which the participants exhort the international community to pressure the Polisario and Algeria “to bring home the situation of the disappeared Moroccans, to distance the political aspect from the humanitarian one, and to bring the torturers before justice.”
The message stresses that the issue of the disappeared Moroccans is not settled, “which has a negative psychological impact on a number of Moroccan families that are still suffering because of the blackout that shrouds this file for three decades now.”
Tags: Morocco, Polisario, Algeria, news
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