New York, Oct 13, 2013 (SPS) - The Polisario Front reiterated Thursday in New York its unwaivering commitment to cooperate with Personal Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for Western Sahara, Christopher Ross to reach a solution that will allow the Saharawi people to exercise their right to self-determination.
Speaking before UN Committee for decolonization, which holds its annual delegations and petitioners hearing on the question of Western Sahara, Polisario representative to the UN Ahmed Boukhari reiterated the full cooperation of the Saharawis in anticipation of the tour of Ross in the region in the coming days.
Boukhari, however, said he feared that Ross returns to New York empty-handed given Morocco’s refusal to cooperate in the development of an “open and transparent” process of decolonization.
Supported by several speakers during the hearing, the Saharawi representative again denounced the military occupation of a large part of Western Sahara by Morocco and abuses and violations of human rights committed by the Moroccan authorities against the Saharawi people.
On this last point, he reported the discovery in June by foreign forensic experts, of mass graves where Sahrawis had been buried after being killed, according to the experts, with a bullet in the head and chest.
It reminds, he continued, mass graves in Srebrenica (Bosnia) in which had been found, years later, many victims of massacres committed 1995.
In this regard, Boukhari wondered if the 600 Saharawi civilians disappeared for several years would not have suffered the same fate somewhere in the desert.
''The unnecessarily cruel and brutal nature'' of the Moroccan occupation was mentioned, he said, not only by international NGOs but also by Moroccan independent media.
In the same regard, he also complained that the peaceful protests in the occupied Saharawi territories continue to be repressed with the same brutality through torture and other abuses as reported by international and human rights NGOs confirmed by the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and the Special Rapporteur of the European Parliament for Western Sahara and the Sahel. (SPS)
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