Bir Lehlou (Sahrawi Republic), 21 August 2024 (SPS) – On Tuesday, President of the Republic and Secretary-General of the Frente POLISARIO, Mr Brahim Ghali, addressed a letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr António Guterres, in which he drew his attention and that of the Members of the Security Council to the grave situation in the Occupied Sahrawi Territories owing to the continued oppression and violence pursued by Morocco, the occupying state, against Sahrawi civilians.
President of the Republic and Secretary-General of the Frente POLISARIO highlighted the scorched-earth policy pursued by the Moroccan occupying authorities through expropriating the lands owned by Sahrawis, destroying their homes, burning their tents, undermining their livelihoods, killing their livestock and poisoning their wells with the declared aim of uprooting them from their homes and lands and settling more Moroccan settlers and others in the Territory as part of an intensive settlement policy whose main objective is to change the demographic composition of the Territory and perpetuate the occupation.
In this context, President of the Republic and Secretary-General of the Frente POLISARIO recalled that the Moroccan occupying authorities carried out an accelerated and intensive campaign to confiscate large areas of Sahrawi lands, especially after Morocco, the occupying state, violated the ceasefire on 13 November 2020, where Sahrawi civilians were expelled and displaced from their pastoral and agricultural lands and their homes were destroyed in several areas around major Occupied Sahrawi Cities.
He added that Morocco, the occupying state, and its repressive forces do not only expropriate the lands owned by Sahrawis, but they also deny them the right to assemble peacefully and claim their lands and denounce this systematic crime to which they are subjected, which violates their rights, including the right to own the lands that they had inherited from one generation to another.
President of the Republic and Secretary-General of the Frente POLISARIO stressed that all such practices are contrary to the provisions of the 1949 Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, in particular article 49, which prohibits individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country. It also stipulates that the Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.
President of the Republic and Secretary-General of the Frente POLISARIO called on the UN Secretary-General to take all necessary measures to hold Morocco, the occupying state, accountable for its blatant violations of international humanitarian law and to use the authority conferred upon him under the Charter of the United Nations and its relevant resolutions to ensure the protection of the fundamental rights of the Sahrawis in Occupied Western Sahara, a Territory waiting to be decolonised under the auspices of the United Nations.
President of the Republic and Secretary-General of the Frente POLISARIO also recalled that Morocco, the occupying state, continues its aggressive practices aimed at silencing the Sahrawi voices, preventing Sahrawi activists from exercising their right to peaceful demonstration, suppressing them and subjecting them to physical and psychological torture as well as deplorable and degrading practices.
He moreover recalled that Morocco, the occupying state, continues to pursue a policy of impoverishment, starvation, deprivation, exclusion, racial discrimination, and disrupting livelihoods against the Sahrawis to subjugate them by force through a multifaceted policy of collective punishment.
President of the Republic and Secretary-General of the Frente POLISARIO drew attention to the heinous crimes committed by Moroccan occupying authorities against Sahrawi political prisoners, including the Gdeim Izik Group, who live in tragic conditions inside the prisons of the occupying state, which force them to go on hunger strike to protest the denial of their basic rights as political prisoners.
President of the Republic and Secretary-General of the Frente POLISARIO again called on the UN Secretary-General to take all necessary measures to ensure the immediate and unconditional release of all Sahrawi political prisoners so that they can return to their homeland and reunite with their families.
President of the Republic and Secretary-General of the Frente POLISARIO drew attention once again to the use by the Moroccan occupying forces, since their violation of the ceasefire on 13 November 2020, of all types of weapons, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which has so far led to the killing of hundreds of civilians and the injury of dozens of serious and varying severities, including nationals of neighbouring countries while crossing the Liberated Sahrawi Territories.
President of the Republic and Secretary-General of the Frente POLISARIO reaffirmed that the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian objects constitutes a war crime in line with the Statute of the International Criminal Court and a violation of the rules of international humanitarian law applicable in international armed conflicts. He again called on the United Nations to hold Morocco, the occupying state, accountable for all its crimes against Sahrawi civilians and for its unlawful use of sophisticated lethal weapons.
In addition to the policy of impoverishment, starvation and deprivation pursued by Morocco, the occupying state, against Sahrawis in the Occupied Sahrawi Territories, President of the Republic and Secretary-General of the Frente POLISARIO recalled that the occupying authorities continue to plunder Sahrawi wealth in collusion with foreign parties in flagrant violation of the right of the Sahrawi people to permanent sovereignty over their natural resources.
He called on the UN Secretary-General to use all means at his disposal to inform world public opinion and the relevant organs of the United Nations of all the economic and other unlawful activities carried out by Morocco, the occupying state, in Occupied Western Sahara with a view to pillaging the natural resources of the Sahrawi people, consolidating by force the colonial fait accompli in the Territory and undermining the exercise by the Sahrawi people of their right to self-determination and independence in accordance with General Assembly resolution on “Economic and other activities which affect the interests of the peoples of the Non-Self-Governing Territories”, dated 11 December 2023.
President of the Republic and Secretary-General of the Frente POLISARIO called once again on the UN Secretary-General and the international Organisation to shoulder its responsibility in all its dimensions towards the Sahrawi people, particularly Sahrawi civilians living in the territories under illegal Moroccan occupation, until the people of Western Sahara have exercised their inalienable right to self-determination and independence.
President of the Republic and Secretary-General of the Frente POLISARIO again warned that the continuation of the flagrant human rights violations perpetrated by Morocco, the occupying state, against Sahrawi civilians and human rights defenders further weakens confidence in the United Nations-sponsored peace process in Western Sahara and the credibility of the United Nations itself, seriously undermines the prospects for relaunching the stalled peace process and stymies the efforts of the Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General for Western Sahara.
In this regard, President of the Republic and Secretary-General of the Frente POLISARIO reaffirmed that no serious and meaningful peace process will ever be possible so long as Morocco, the occupying state, persists, with complete impunity, in its violations of the norms of international humanitarian law and international law in Occupied Western Sahara as well as its attempts to forcibly impose a fait accompli in the Territory in full view of the United Nations and its Mission on the ground.
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