Buenos Aires, November 23, 2014 (SPS) – Society, labor and human rights personalities reject the holding of the second edition of the World Forum on Human Rights scheduled for November 27-30, in Marrakech, Morocco, its human rights violations, torture and ill-treatment against the Sahrawis and Moroccans.
Morocco also practices "repression, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, kidnappings, deportations, mass graves, intimidation, torture," according to the report published in May 2014 by the UN Rapporteur on Torture (Argentine Juan Méndez), as well as reports documented by almost all international organizations and Argentina.
In a statement, the signatories condemned the looting by the Kingdom of Morocco of Western Sahara natural resources, a territory subject to a decolonization process under the UN supervision pending its decolonization through a referendum to enable the Saharawi people to pronounce freely their future.
The signatories also denounced the persistence of the Moroccan repression of peaceful demonstrators and defenders of human rights, maintenance of the state of siege in the occupied Western Sahara and the prohibition of access to the foreign press and international observers.
"The Kingdom of Morocco is a country that violates UN resolutions with impunity and tramples the international law and refuses to receive the Personal Envoy of the UN Secretary General for Western Sahara, US Ambassador Christopher Ross. It also opposes Kim Bolduc, the new Special Representative of the UNSG and Chief of MINURSO, taking her office."
"It also refuses to cooperate with the Special Envoy of the African Union (AU), former President of the Republic of Mozambique, Joaquim Chissano, and prevents the expansion of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO ) from monitoring of human rights ", they regretted. (SPS)
062/090/TR