New York, 6 March 2021 (SPS) - Sahrawi President Brahim Ghali has denounced, in a letter sent to the UN Secretary General and adopted as an official document of the Security Council, the dire situation of human rights in the occupied territories of Western Sahara since the breakdown of the cease-fire by Morocco.
"I urgently draw your attention and that of the members of the Security Council to the catastrophic situation prevailing in the territories of Western Sahara under illegal Moroccan occupation, particularly since the act of aggression perpetrated on 13 November 2020 against the territories liberated from Western Sahara by the occupying state," President Ghali wrote in his letter addressed by the Permanent Representative of South Africa to the UN to the President of the Security Council to be circulated as a document of the Council.
The Moroccan state of occupation, continued the Sahrawi president, "has thus torpedoed the cease-fire of 1991 and triggered a new war that could have extremely serious consequences for peace, security and stability in the entire region.
"As we predicted, following the Moroccan act of aggression, which forced our people to resume their legitimate liberation struggle, the state of occupation at the time seemed determined to launch large-scale reprisals against defenseless Sahrawi civilians, human rights activists and journalists," he added.
"Taking advantage of the restrictions related to the outbreak of the pandemic of coronavirus disease (Covid-19), the state of occupation immediately began to tighten its siege on the occupied Sahrawi territories in order to continue to repress and terrorize Sahrawi civilians with impunity," Brahim Ghali said.
He denounced the fact that it is "the inaction of the UN Secretariat and the Security Council and their appalling silence in the face of the new act of aggression by Morocco that has encouraged the occupying state to persist in its repressive and barbaric practices aimed at terrorizing the population of the occupied Sahrawi territories.
"Today, an unprecedented situation is taking place in occupied Western Sahara, where the Moroccan occupation authorities are using all their security arsenal to wage a war of aggression in retaliation against the
defenseless Sahrawi civilians, in full view of the UN and its mission in the territory," he added. (SPS)
062/090/700