Chahid Al Hafed (refugee camps), June 18, 2014 (SPS) - Forty-four years have passed since the outbreak of the historic Zemla Uprising on 17 June 1970, announced by the Avant-Garde Movement for the Liberation of the Sahara under the leadership of Mohamed Sid Brahim Basiri on 17 June 1970.
The event was a “turning point” in the history of the Saharawi national movement for independence, through which the Saharawi disappeared Basiri played a pivotal role in the face of Spanish occupation authorities.
Born in 1942 in the city of Tan Tan (southern Morocco), Basiri earned a Bachelor’s degree on journalism from Cairo University in 1967, and served as the editor-in-chief of Chumuu (candles) newspaper, before being banned by Morocco.
The Association of Families of the Saharawi Prisoners and Disappeared (AFAPREDESA) classified him as being the oldest missing person on earth.
Basiri, whose fate remains unknown with the absence of the evidence (corpse), was arrested by the Spanish colonial authorities on the night of June 18th, 1970, on the ground of his peaceful struggle against the Spanish colonial presence in Western Sahara.
He is a symbol at the top of a list of hundreds of Saharawis missing, unaccounted for and prisoners of war incarcerated in Moroccan prisons. (SPS)
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