Sahara News
by Ali Haidar
“Less than 20 pc of the inhabitants of the Tindouf camps are from Laâyoune, Es-smara or Boujdour (southern Morocco), while the rest are Tuareg and nationals of neighboring countries such as Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad”, said Hamada El Bihi, who has joined Morocco in 2014, after spending 40 years in these camps.
According to El Bihi, chairman of the Sahara League for Democracy and Human rights, based in Laayoune, the Polisario leaders, who receive their orders from the Algerian generals, have always inflated the number of inhabitants of these camps to get more international humanitarian assistance.
It is for these reasons, he told MAP agency, that the Polisario and the Algerian authorities have refused all requests to conduct a census by UN agencies, including the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
He said that the Polisario leaders reject the Moroccan autonomy offer commended worldwide as “serious and credible”, while desperately trying to “sell utopia and lies” to the people of Lahmada in order to prolong the conflict, making the most of it.
El Bihi says that upon his return to his homeland, he discovered that the provinces of the Moroccan Sahara have been deeply overhauled and witnessing “unprecedented dynamic” with burgeoning major construction sites, including the building of the expressway between Agadir and Dakhla, the landmark project of the Atlantic port in Dakhla, the airports of Laâyoune and Dakhla, the desalination plants, sport complexes, hospitals, medical school in Laayoune, etc…
But, in the Lahmada camps, the Sahrawi inhabitants are suffering from terror and repression of the polisario torturers, he added, denouncing the forced disappearances of several Sahrawi pro-democracy militants and the arbitrary arrests made by the polisario militias targeting opponents and human rights activists.
According to Head of the Sahara Observatory for Peace, Democracy and Human rights, Mrs. Aicha Duihi, an “unprecedented rebellion” is rocking Tindouf “against corruption, diversion of humanitarian aid and tyranny prevailing in these camps”.
