Tuesday, March 25, 2008

SAHRAWI PRISONERS NEED HELP NOW


In the summer of 2007 Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg of Norway met the then 22-year-old Rabab Amidane from Western Sahara. She was then trying to obtain political support for her brother, who had been imprisoned since 2006.

Now Sahrawi political prisoners , including Rabab's brother, in the black jail of El-Ayoune, are in the midst of an unlimited hunger strike, which began on February 25, 2008, against the dreadful incarceration of political prisoners in the conflict. They are demanding an improvement of their conditions of detention, as well as their legitimate rights guaranteed by international conventions and treaties, as prisoners of conscience.

Other prisoners have since joined the protest.

"All the political prisoners have decided to go on a hunger strike as of Monday, 10 March,"Sahrawi prisoner El Ouali Amidane (21) told ABC News on the telephone.

With their health deteriorating rapidly the Sahrawi President has called on the UN to do something.

The Saharawi human rights activist and ex-political prisoner, Tarruzi Yehdih, described the notorious Carcel Negra or the black jail
where he was imprisoned and tortured for ten months as “A tomb for alive people." He described the Black Jail like this:


"The prison doesn’t even guarantee the conditions contained in the Law 23/98 with all its goods and wrong. Along with all the suffering of the prisoners provoked by the malnutrition, the lack of drinkable water, the deficiency of medical assistance, the non-existence of ventilation or hygienic conditions as well as the over-grouping of prisoners in one cell, the prisoners, mainly the political prisoners, endure everyday the oppression of the authorities."

The following is from the Algerian Press Agency.

Sahrawi detainees in danger: Sahrawi President calls U.N leader to intervene immediately

Bir Lehlu (Sahrawi liberated territories) – The Polisario front called the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to intervene "immediately" to save the sixty Sahrawi detainees, whose health condition "has worsened" in the Moroccan prisons. In a letter addressed to the UN Secretary General reported Monday by Sahara Press Service (SPS), Sahraoui President Mohamed Abdelaziz called the UN to intervene "immediately" to save the life of some sixty Sahrawi detainees "subject to death at any time" owing to the deterioration of their health condition after a month of strike-hunger in many Moroccan prisons.


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