The President of the World Peace Council (WPC), Socorro Gomes, has issued a statement this Wednesday (17) to express solidarity with the Sahrawi political prisoners on trial in Morocco and with the broad struggle for Sahrawi self-determination, demanding an end to Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara. The WPC has a long standing commitment to the struggle for de-colonization and the liberation of the Sahrawi people. Read the text below:
For the liberation of the Sahrawi prisoners and the end of the Moroccan occupation now!
It is with revolt and concern that we follow the news of the arbitrary political process instituted by the Kingdom of Morocco against more than twenty Sahrawi activists, a process that has been dragged for seven years by authorities of a regime of military occupation.
According to international observers, the trials of 25 Sahrawis who have dared to participate in a peaceful protest in Gdeim Izik in 2010, in resistance against the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, are biased and unjust, destined to play a role in a farce in which the Moroccan regime is supposedly democratic.
Aware that the process is yet another important chapter in the firm struggle of the Sahrawi people for self-determination, the World Peace Council has expressed its broad and resolute support for the decolonization of Western Sahara, demanding the fulfillment of a promise made more than four decades ago and reinforced in the agreements signed by the Polisario Front and Morocco in 1991.
By systematically violating its part of the cease-fire agreed upon, the Moroccan Kingdom relies on the complicity of European powers such as France and the financing of its repressive apparatus by another autocratic monarchy, Saudi Arabia. Enough of negligence! We demand that the UN guarantees the protection of human rights and fulfill the commitment to self-determination of the Sahrawi people made more than two decades ago with the promise of a rerendum, which must be realized urgently!
We also demand the release of the Sahrawi political prisoners, who denounce torture and other ill-treatment as mechanisms of Moroccan repression.
We express our solidarity with the brave Sahrawi struggle and commit ourselves to strengthening our mobilization for decolonization.
For the end of the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, long live the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and the Sahrawi people’s resistance!
Socorro Gomes,
President of the World Peace Council
CEBRAPAZ 