Sunday, November 21, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Western Sahara : Chronology and Fact Sheet on Disturbances in Laayoune, Morocco
November 15, 2010 Chronology and Fact Sheet on Disturbances in Laayoune, Morocco
On October 9, residents of Laayoune began setting up a symbolic protest camp in the desert east of the city. People came to the camp from their homes in Laayoune to demonstrate for additional housing and job opportunities to accommodate the growing population.
Over the past year, there has been a significant increase in the influx of refugees from the Tindouf camps in Algeria. The people in the camp believed the recent arrivals received preferential treatment in terms of housing and subsidies based on specific tribal affiliations and the government’s desire to settle newcomers as quickly as possible. Over the next two weeks, Moroccan authorities met with the protestors, who numbered in the thousands, to discuss their grievances.
Committees made up of public authorities, sheiks, elected officials, and representatives of civil society began meeting regularly. What began as a peaceful protest quickly deteriorated into a dangerous situation when a number of known criminals and pro-Polisario militants infiltrated the camp and tried to gain control. On October 24, there was a violent altercation that led to the death of a 14-year old boy.
The car in which the youth was riding attempted to run a checkpoint and came under fire from authorities. After shots were fired and the vehicle stopped, weapons were found in the possession of some of the passengers. In investigating this episode, authorities discovered the infiltration by the criminal element and by pro-Polisario militants who tried to hijack this social protest having nothing to do with Polisario political aims. Last week, authorities concluded that the people in the camp were in danger.
After securing the judicial authorization required by Moroccan law, the decision was made to dismantle the camp in the early morning hours Monday November 8, 2010. The time was determined by the fact that there were the fewest number of people in the camp on Monday mornings, since many of them regularly left the camp to return to their homes in Laayoune for the weekends. On Monday morning, before 6 a.m. local time, authorities sent helicopters with megaphones asking people to leave the camp. A majority of them complied with the request and left. From 6:30-7:45 a.m., anti-riot forces moved into the camp with only anti-riot equipment and water cannons, carrying no weapons. A small group of militants inside the camp fought the anti-riot forces with bottled gas canisters, Molotov cocktails, and knives.
70 Moroccan policemen were injured and 10 killed by the militant group inside the camp. Immediately after the camp was disbanded, small armed groups from the camp went into the city of Laayoune and set fire to targeted buildings including a TV station and a bank. The militants beheaded an unarmed policeman. Following these events, 65 people carrying weapons were arrested and await prosecution. The Polisario and its supporters have made a number of unfounded allegations trying to cover up the deplorable violence committed by their backers.
After examining the camp site, the UN Secretary-General's representative, MINURSO head Hany Abdel-Aziz, gave an account that countered these allegations. He told French daily Le Monde "I saw no trace of bullet cartridges" in the camp authorities dismantled outside Laayoune. Instead, he was “amazed by the number of butane gas bottles" which militants used to set fires.
In addition, Spanish news agency EFE admitted to erroneously publishing 4-year-old Gaza photos supplied by pro-Polisario sources that falsely identified the infant victims as coming from Monday’s unrest in Laayoune. Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said exploiting the photos of injured Palestinian infants was “disinformation” to mislead international public opinion and distort Morocco’s record. He reiterated Palestinian support of Morocco’s efforts to settle the Western Sahara conflict by peaceful means.
On October 9, residents of Laayoune began setting up a symbolic protest camp in the desert east of the city. People came to the camp from their homes in Laayoune to demonstrate for additional housing and job opportunities to accommodate the growing population.
Over the past year, there has been a significant increase in the influx of refugees from the Tindouf camps in Algeria. The people in the camp believed the recent arrivals received preferential treatment in terms of housing and subsidies based on specific tribal affiliations and the government’s desire to settle newcomers as quickly as possible. Over the next two weeks, Moroccan authorities met with the protestors, who numbered in the thousands, to discuss their grievances.
Committees made up of public authorities, sheiks, elected officials, and representatives of civil society began meeting regularly. What began as a peaceful protest quickly deteriorated into a dangerous situation when a number of known criminals and pro-Polisario militants infiltrated the camp and tried to gain control. On October 24, there was a violent altercation that led to the death of a 14-year old boy.
The car in which the youth was riding attempted to run a checkpoint and came under fire from authorities. After shots were fired and the vehicle stopped, weapons were found in the possession of some of the passengers. In investigating this episode, authorities discovered the infiltration by the criminal element and by pro-Polisario militants who tried to hijack this social protest having nothing to do with Polisario political aims. Last week, authorities concluded that the people in the camp were in danger.
After securing the judicial authorization required by Moroccan law, the decision was made to dismantle the camp in the early morning hours Monday November 8, 2010. The time was determined by the fact that there were the fewest number of people in the camp on Monday mornings, since many of them regularly left the camp to return to their homes in Laayoune for the weekends. On Monday morning, before 6 a.m. local time, authorities sent helicopters with megaphones asking people to leave the camp. A majority of them complied with the request and left. From 6:30-7:45 a.m., anti-riot forces moved into the camp with only anti-riot equipment and water cannons, carrying no weapons. A small group of militants inside the camp fought the anti-riot forces with bottled gas canisters, Molotov cocktails, and knives.
70 Moroccan policemen were injured and 10 killed by the militant group inside the camp. Immediately after the camp was disbanded, small armed groups from the camp went into the city of Laayoune and set fire to targeted buildings including a TV station and a bank. The militants beheaded an unarmed policeman. Following these events, 65 people carrying weapons were arrested and await prosecution. The Polisario and its supporters have made a number of unfounded allegations trying to cover up the deplorable violence committed by their backers.
After examining the camp site, the UN Secretary-General's representative, MINURSO head Hany Abdel-Aziz, gave an account that countered these allegations. He told French daily Le Monde "I saw no trace of bullet cartridges" in the camp authorities dismantled outside Laayoune. Instead, he was “amazed by the number of butane gas bottles" which militants used to set fires.
In addition, Spanish news agency EFE admitted to erroneously publishing 4-year-old Gaza photos supplied by pro-Polisario sources that falsely identified the infant victims as coming from Monday’s unrest in Laayoune. Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said exploiting the photos of injured Palestinian infants was “disinformation” to mislead international public opinion and distort Morocco’s record. He reiterated Palestinian support of Morocco’s efforts to settle the Western Sahara conflict by peaceful means.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
'I saw no trace of bullets cartridge' in camp dismantled near Laayun, UN representative
Maghreb Arab Press Friday, November 12, 2010 'I saw no trace of bullets cartridge' in camp dismantled near Laayun, UN representative Paris - The MINURSO's head Hany Abdel-Aziz said he saw no trace of bullets cartridge in the Gdeim Izik camp, which was dismantled by the authorities near Laayoune (southern Morocco). "I saw no trace of bullets cartridge" in the Gdeim Izik camp, the MINURSO's head told the French daily "Le Monde", issue of Saturday. In a damning account against the allegations of the Polisario and its supporters, the UN Secretary-General's special representative said that he was "amazed by the number of butane gas bottles" he found in the camp’s remains. These gas bottles would have been used to set fire, as confirmed by local authorities.
Morocco accuses West Sahara activists of killing police RABAT (Reuters) -
Morocco Monday defended a raid on a West Sahara protest camp by its security forces as being "deliberately peaceful" and accused Sahrawi activists of "brutal practices" including cutting the throat of a Moroccan policeman. Activists among the Sahrawis -- as the desert territory's inhabitants are known -- have insisted their protest was peaceful and was focused on social demands like jobs and housing, not on political issues. Western Sahara is a former Spanish colony in northwest Africa that was annexed by Morocco in 1975, sparking a rebellion by the Polisario Front. The United Nations brokered a cease-fire in 1991, but a political settlement to Africa's longest-running territorial dispute has eluded negotiators. Morocco said 10 members of its security forces were killed in the clashes that erupted on November 8 when they broke up the protest camp on the edge of Laayoune, the territory's main city, and demonstrations later that day in the streets of the city. Polisario, the territory's independence movement, said in a letter to the U.N. Security Council Monday that more than 36 Sahrawis died in the clashes and 163 were detained, and demanded a U.N. investigation of the clashes. Moroccan Interior Minister Taieb Cherkaoui and Foreign Minister Taieb Fassi Fihri held an unprecedented joint news conference to show video footage shot by Moroccan police, showing at least one Moroccan policeman's throat being cut. "We watched the slaughter operation. This can only be done by a well-trained person who had experience in such killing," Cherkaoui said. "This violence is alien to Moroccans whether they are in the Sahara or elsewhere." The Polisario and Western Saharan activists have said they were staging a peaceful protest which was the subject of an excessively violent attack by Moroccan security forces. They say they defended themselves but have disputed the Moroccan casualty figures, saying many more civilian protesters were killed and wounded than the Moroccan authorities say. (Reporting by Lamine Ghanmi, editing by Tim Pearce)
Western Sahara News
You have to appreciate the irony. The Palestinians — who have made photo propaganda and falsification a central part of their anti-Israel efforts — are now caught up in such a gambit by another liberation-style group. The context is the ongoing conflict between Morocco and the Polisario Front, which opposes a Moroccan plan for autonomy for the West Sahara and prefers to fan the flames of conflict and perpetuate the misery of those warehoused in camps in Algeria. The latest incident is detailed in this account: At a news conference, Interior Minister Taieb Cherkaoui played a video which he said showed “a man armed with a knife slitting the throat of two members of the security forces, the first in the camp and the second in Laayoune”, the Western Sahara’s main town. These were “barbarous acts”, said Cherkaoui. The video was shot by Moroccan police. The raid on the camp near Laayoune housing thousands of Sahrawis, who moved there to protest against their living conditions, was carried out on November 8, a few hours before a new round of talks between the Polisario, the main Western Sahara rebel group, and the Moroccan government started near New York. Morocco has said that 12 people died in clashes between protesters and the police, including 10 members of the security forces. But the pro-independence Polisario said dozens of people died and more than 4,500 were wounded in the violence. Cherkaoui said some Sahrawi protesters, whom he described as criminal gangs, “deliberately killed members of the security forces, used knives, molotov cocktails and gas canisters” to start fires. The police raid “was deliberately peaceful, no shots were fired and no deaths were reported from among the camp population and from Laayoune”, said Cherkaoui. Well, the Polisario Front felt compelled to embellish and distort the incident. The group bandied about photos of wounded children — a sure-fire attention getter with the Western media, as the Palestinians have proven time and again. But the children weren’t from the Western Sahara but instead from Gaza (perhaps a few of the human shields used by Hamas?). This report explains: Spanish news agency EFE said Friday it had sent a photo supposedly of injured infants in Western Sahara which turned out to be a four-year-old image of children hurt in Gaza. The photo, purchased from a web site which made the original error, was published in major daily newspapers including the leading daily El Pais, and the centre-right daily El Mundo. It showed infants with their heads wrapped in bandages being treated in hospital. In El Pais, the photo carried the caption: “Two injured Saharan children are treated at a hospital in Laayoune,” the capital of the Western Sahara. Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat is now incensed by such disinformation. The lesson here is one for respectable media outlets: be wary of accepting at face value reports or photographic “evidence” from groups whose journalistic bona fides are in question and whose motives are suspect. And that’s a lesson that is equally applicable in the Western Sahara and in Gaza.
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