2024-04-15 07:02:45
The African Network for Development, Governance and Human Rights (RADHEG) thus denounced “the silence of the international community in relation to the atrocities committed, with impunity, against the Sahrawis in the Tindouf camps, under the influence of armed militias of the +polisario+ and the Algerian army”.
In its intervention during the general debate on the update of the report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, within the framework of the 55th session of the Human Rights Council (HRC), the RADHEG stressed that “the latter commit the worst atrocities against these Sahrawis, more particularly human rights defenders and activists on social networks, daring to denounce the crimes committed by these militias, including extrajudicial executions, forced disappearance, rape, the recruitment of child soldiers, slavery and the misappropriation of humanitarian aid.
The NGO expressed its concern, especially “that despite these serious violations committed in camps located on Algerian soil, none of the two Special Rapporteurs who visited the country in 2023 took the “it is difficult to pay the slightest attention to the serious situation of these kidnapped people on Algerian territory.”
For its part, the NGO “Il Cenacolo” denounced the persistent complicity of the Algerian State, host of the “polisario”, which turns a blind eye to the serious violations of human rights committed against the inhabitants of the Tindouf camps, as well as “the failure of United Nations mechanisms, in particular the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, to implement its protection mandate conferred on it under the Geneva Convention”.
“Sahrawi refugees living in five residential camps completely surrounded by the Algerian army are facing the most brutal forms of repression exercised by the leadership of +polisario+ and the Algerian army, which systematically resort to extrajudicial killings,” lamented long.
“This is illustrated by the recent murder of 16 young Sahrawis during their attempt to leave the camps, shot at point blank range, as well as by the immolation of two others still alive, after having been coldly doused with gasoline by members of the Algerian army”, regretted Il Cenacolo.
“Forced disappearance is one of the means most used by the executioners of the +polisario+ to silence any voice daring to denounce the serious violations committed by the militias,” warned the same source, citing as an example “the case of parents of Mohamed Salem Al Kori, whose fate remains unknown since his kidnapping, as well as hundreds of Sahrawis who died under torture and buried in anonymous graves on the outskirts of the town of Tindouf in Algeria.
The organization called on the international community “to exert pressure on Algeria so that it assumes its responsibility with regard to the crimes committed on its territory by its army and the militias of the +polisario+ against the Sahrawis, in addition to reveal the fate of the disappeared and bring the executioners to justice.
2024-04-15 07:02:45