Reacting to news of the extreme sentences imposed by the Moroccan authorities against a group of Saharawi activists (which include life imprisonment), the President of the World Peace Council, Socorro Gomes, has issued a statement this Sunday (23) to strongly reject the persecution of the activists and to call for the end of the occupation of Western Sahara by the Kingdom of Morocco. The entire trial had been rejected by various entities that dennounced its arbitrariness and the ill-treatment suffered by the prisoners. Read Socorro Gomes’ statement below:
We denounce the false trial of the Saharawi prisoners; Free Western Sahara!
We have received the extremely serious news of the conviction of Saharawi activists of the “Gdeim Izik group” by the Kingdom of Morocco and their sentencing to severe punishment up to life imprisonment. We join the movements in solidarity with the Saharawi people in the struggle for their liberation from the Moroccan occupation in condemnation, in the strongest terms, and strongly rejection of the criminal process against the activists, who are persecuted for defending Western Sahara’s self-determination!
The World Peace Council has supported and expressed its solidarity with the brave combatants for the liberation of the Western Sahara, which has been occupied by the Kingdom of Morocco for more than 40 years since Spain, a colonial power and administrator, withdrew from the territory in the 1970s.
Therefore, the penalty imposed by the Moroccan authorities, first through a military court and later through a civil court, who announced similar sentences, is unacceptable and must be rejected by all governments and social movements in the strongest terms!
Either in a peaceful protest camp organized in 2010 with more than 20,000 people, as well as on the streets of occupied Western Sahara, on a day-to-day basis, numerous human rights and freedom defenders are dragged to suffer torture and other ill-treatment, such as those denounced by the newly convicted activists, in a case that several international observers have denounced as irregular.
The decolonization of Western Sahara must be carried out immediately, with the realization of the referendum promised in 1991, so that the Saharawi people can exercise their right to self-determination. The maintenance of a brutal occupation through human rights violations committed on a daily basis needs to be exposed! The Kingdom of Morocco relies on the connivance and complicity of allies such as France, Spain, the USA and Saudi Arabia, without which it could not continue to maintain an entire people under humiliation, imprisonment, torture, or exile.
We demand the liberation of the Saharawi political prisoners and the liberation of the Western Sahara, now!
Socorro Gomes
President of the World Peace Council (SPS)
062/090
https://cebrapaz.org.br/2017/07/24/president-of-the-world-peace-council…