sahara-news.org

Neither the armed militia of the Polisario Front nor elements from the Algerian military intelligence services ( DRS – Security and Intelligence Department) appear to be able to stop the haemorrhage of the running away from Tindouf camps. Proof can be given by the record-breaking figure of 1000 Sahrawis who have joined Morocco in six months time, but also the phenomena of groups containing an average of fifty persons including women and children.
Even the arrest at the end of last June, by an Algerian armed commando and Polisario, of a group of 50 Sahrawis who were trying to leave Tindouf camps to join Morocco via Mauritania, did not dissuade other discontented in the camps to try the adventure of escaping from there.
We have just learned from our source in Mauritania that one hundred Sahrawis who have succeeded in escaping from Tindouf camps , a prison in the open air, are about to join Morocco.
Since two weeks ago, they file off, from early in the morning, in front of Morocco consulate services located along the Maritime avenue in Nouadhibou, to accomplish the transit formalities to join the Moroccan territory where they would meet their families and relatives, after long years of separation.

The Algerian authorities have again been asked, as a hosting country, to open the doors of Tindouf camps to let the UN specialized Organisations conduct a census of the Sahrawi populations established in these camps. A Norwegian NGO has recently made an urgent call to the international community to make more pressure on the Algerian authorities so that they give their support to organizing this census in free and transparent circumstances. It was on the occasion celebrating the World Refugee Day that the Norwegian NGO "World Action for Refugees” made its call to the Algerian government to assume its responsibility as a hosting country of the Sahrawis’ camps. By the same occasion, the NGO has condemned the “inhuman” conditions in which hundreds of Sahrawis have been living in the Tindouf camps for more than three decades, entirely depending on international humanitarian aids.

With the coming visit of the Human Rights Watch (HRW) visit to Tindouf camps, many Sahrawis detained by the Polisario have been transferred to other non identified places in Algeria. Worried, families of these detained have got in touch with some Sahrawi and international human rights organizations, calling them to intervene to shed light on the detention and life conditions of their relatives.

Just before the arrival of HRW members, authorized by Algiers to go to Tindouf, Polisario leaders relieved congestion at their prisons. Some common law prisoners have been released but most of the detained people opposing the Polisario separatist ideology and thesis have been transferred to unknown places. 

The peace caravan, organized in solidarity with the Moroccan project for the Sahara autonomy, and gathering 350 persons : those operating in associations, Moroccans living in Europe and journalists, namely from Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Spain, Tunisia and Algeria, has arrived to Laayoune, on June 17th, after having left Brussels and gone through many European capitals and Moroccan cities.
The Peace Caravan has started its journey from Brussels, more exactly from the European Council headquarters, an opportunity to hand over to European executives letters supporting the Sahara autonomy initiative. Letters denouncing also the living conditions of Sahrawis sequestrated in Tindouf camps, in the Algerian territory. The Peace Caravan has, thus, gone through many European capitals and big cities among which Strasbourg, capital of the European Parliament, Paris, Lyon, Barcelona and Madrid in order to make the European public opinion aware about the importance and credibility of the Sahara autonomy project and about the historical, political and cultural legitimacy of the Moroccan provinces in the South.

Many NGO have denounced at the UN Human Rights Council, holding its meeting in Geneva, their heartfelt preoccupations regarding the serious human rights violations committed against Sahrawis detained in Polisario camps, in Algerian territories.
Thus, thousands of Sahrawis detained by force in these camps in the Algerian desert, are deprived of their rights to express themselves and to move freely, in a flagrant violation of human rights  and the international humanitarian right, as insisted upon by these NGO, in front of the HRC holding its 14th session.
The situation of these sequestrated persons is very precarious especially that they are abandoned to the armed militia of the Polisario separatist group, in the absence of the slightest international protection and the access of UN organizations and NGO to these camps.