V.Exa. Inga Rhona King Presidente do Conselho de Segurança
V.Exas. Membros do Conselho de Segurança das Nações Unidas
V.Exa. António Guterres, Secretário-Geral das Nações Unidas
V.Exa.. Michelle Bachelet Alta Comissária das Nações Unidas para os Direitos Humanos
Porunsaharalibre.org is a social media site, which was founded to help fill the gap in the media blackout on Western Sahara.
For the past six years we addressed the UN Security Council and the Secretary General as well as the High Commissioner for Human Rights on several occasions conveying our concerns with the serious human rights violations and breaches of International Law and International Humanitarian Law in the occupied territories of Western Sahara.
Our knowledge and articles are based on first-hand experience and observation as well as contacts with the population on the ground. One of our members has published several reports on the situation not only of the political prisoners as well as the situation of the Saharawi children and students under occupation[1], result of five years of interviews and recollection of data.
We were surprised by the report of H.E. Secretary General António Guterres, which in his report speaks of “calm situation” in the occupied territories of Western Sahara, a phrase that appears again in Resolution 2548 (2020) Adopted by the Security Council on 30 October 2020.
We can only understand this assessment with complete ignorance of the facts on the ground, which only highlights the urgent need of the inclusion of a human rights mandate in MINURSO. On the other hand, we can also see that the members of the Council seem to lack information on the situation of the political prisoners and specially the Gdeim Izik group and hope the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights could inform the members of the Council about the interim measures, decisions, and opinions of the human rights mechanisms issued and not respected to date by the Moroccan Kingdom.
Furthermore, we would like to know why the Security Council is so afraid to include a Human Rights mandate in MINURSO’s tasks?
In case that the Security Council is in indeed interested in a peaceful solution we can only say that this resolution had the absolute contrary effect as you can verify by the reactions of the Saharawi leadership, the Polisario Front, as well as all Saharawi population in the occupied territories, the liberated areas, the refugee camps and the diaspora.
Attached we send you a list of the articles published from January to October 2020 by porunsaharalibre (only a small part of what happens on the ground) which clearly show that the situation on the ground is far from “calm”, unless the abductions, arbitrary detentions, farce trials, intentional medical neglect, plunder of natural resources, surveillance and invasion of houses, etc., actions committed by Morocco (the occupying power), can be classified by the honorable members of the Security Council as a “calm situation”. We sincerely believe that is not the case, and that it would be unacceptable in any of your countries.
Respectfully and in the hope that Peace for Western Sahara is the real goal of the United Nations,
Direction team of PUSL,
Fito Álvarez
Conchi Fernández
Isabel L Ourenço
[1] https://www.africanos.eu/images/publicacoes/working_papers/WP_2019_1.pdf
PUSL-CS EN
