The Moroccan Ambassador to South Africa, Youssef Amrani, shed light on Tuesday on the transgressions which keep the populations held against their will in the Tindouf camps in increasingly severe humanitarian situation.
“Human rights violations by ‘polisario’ separatists in the Tindouf camps in Algeria have continued since the creation of the first camps more than 40 years ago and systematic abuses have increased,” Amrani pointed out in a new video broadcast as part of the embassy’s communication campaign entitled “between myths and realities: understanding the regional dispute over the Sahara”.
This is the 4th footage in a series of eight thematic capsules launched by the embassy of the Kingdom of Morocco in Pretoria on the historical depths, the legal exactitudes and the political relevance of the Moroccan Sahara issue.
In previous capsules, Amrani had deconstructed, with supporting facts and legal arguments, the ideological allegations referring to the Sahara as the last colony in Africa, dispelled the fallacious fog surrounding the referendum and highlighted the coherence of the UN dynamics.
The diplomat deplored, in this new video, that tens of thousands of individuals are still held against their will in desperate conditions, without freedom of expression or association, without freedom of movement or work and this in flagrant violation of the international humanitarian law.
In addition to precariousness, there is opacity. This video footage shows that access to the camps for human rights observers is limited and subject to strict requirements, the drasticity of which is naturally a source of suspicion.
“Algeria and the ‘polisario’ regularly refuse to allow the United Nations carry out a census,” Amrani pointed out.
This opacity is the one that sheds the veil on undoubtedly even more disastrous realities, he noted, recalling that many independent and highly recognized bodies including the European Parliament and the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) have reported that the “polisario” regularly diverts international food aid intended for the populations of the camps.
Amrani noted, to this end, that the international community is standing up against the political, ignoble and shameless instrumentalisation which is made of a population plunged into despair and silenced, stressing that the Geneva Convention of 1951 on refugees and its protocol of 1967 cannot be hopelessly violated in indifference and general oblivion.
“These sequestrated camps are lawless areas and cannot continue to be so indefinitely,” he said.
Amrani also wondered how long it can accepted that Algeria can delegate the protection of human rights on its territory and transfer part of its sovereign powers to an armed group, like the “polisario”?
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