Place des Palmistes Cayenne -Guyane: Saturday 01 04/2023
Anti-occupation activists and Sahrawi activists seeking asylum in Guyana
Press release
In occupied Western Sahara, the Sahrawi political prisoners are deprived of their freedom in political trials under common law offences, the Moroccan prison administration which does not cease to persecute them and to confiscate their rights enacted by international rules such as the “United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners” known as “Nelson Mandela Rules”.
As a result, the Saharawi political prisoners, incarcerated far from their relatives in all the dark Moroccan prisons, are permanently forced to engage in warning or unlimited hunger strikes. This is particularly the case for the detainees of Gdim Izik and the group of students.
The “battle of the empty stomachs” of hunger strikers such as these is due to the extent of humiliation and deprivation of the most basic rights, such as the right to spend the period of incarceration in a prison close to their families. The occupying power has decided to aggravate the suffering of their families by deporting them to terrible prisons hundreds of kilometres away in Morocco, far from Western Sahara.
We, anti-occupation activists and Sahrawi activists who have fled repression and are seeking asylum in French Guiana, present today 01/ 04/2023 at the des Palmistes Cayenne to :
- Strongly condemn the human rights violations, repression in the occupied territory of Western Sahara (prosecutions, arrests, incarcerationsة torture etc..) and demand the unconditional release of all Sahrawi political prisoners in Moroccan prisons.
- To demand from the International Commission of the Red Cross as well as from the UN Security Council and the African Union the protection of Sahrawi civilians and to send urgently a mission to the occupied territories of Western Sahara to investigate these reprisals and visit the Sahrawi political prisoners in Moroccan prisons.
- To send a solidarity greeting to all Sahrawi political prisoners in Moroccan prisons, as well as to the Sahrawi populations of the occupied territories of Western Sahara and southern Morocco, systematically closed to the press and international observers, and to all those who suffer from occupation and apartheid.
- Express our support for the aggressed and oppressed Sahrawi people in their struggle under the leadership of the Polisario Front for self-determination and freedom.
