Peace Prize Laureat Writes to UN Security Council on The Western Sahara Issue

Letter to UN Security Council
Suzanne Scholte

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/86422


In this letter to the President of the UN Security Council, Seoul
Peace Prize Laureate Suzanne Scholte urges the Council to prevail upon
the King of Morocco to overturn the draconian sentences recently
handed down to 24 Sahrawi activists

His Excellence Kim Sook, President
United Nations Security Council
335 East 45th Street
New York 10017

February 19, 2013

Dear President Kim

I am writing with an urgent request regarding the recent sentencing by
a military court in the Kingdom of Morocco of twenty-four Sahrawi
civilians. These Sahrawis have been held and repeatedly tortured for
over two years because they had joined in a peaceful protest against
their treatment as second class citizens in their homeland, Moroccan
Occupied Western Sahara. Now they are facing sentences ranging from
several years to life imprisonment in a dubious and politically
motivated trial that has alt=ready raised concern from the
international community including the UN Commissioner for Human Rights
whose office cited the UN Human Rights Committee's statement that the
use 'of military or special courts to try civilians raises serious
problems as far as the equitable, impartial and independent
administration of justice is concerned.'

It is an appalling situation that the United Nations must address
because the UN bears responsibility for this latest tragic sitation.
The failure of the UN's MINURSO to resolve this issue through the long
promised referendum AND the failure of the UN not to include human
rights monitoring as part of MINURSO, the only peacekeeping mission
without a human rights component, has prolonged the suffering and made
and made it possible for the Moroccan authorities to continue their
systematic repression and violence against Sahrawi men, women and
children.

I urge the UN Security Council to call upon the King of Morocco to
overturn these draconian sentences and release the Sahrawis, to
include human rights monitoring as part of the MINURSO peacekeeping
mission to prevent these continuing atrocities and, finally, to fulfil
its promise to resolve this longstanding conflict by going forward
with the long promised referendum on self-determination.

Suzzane Scholte
Seoul Peace Prize Laureate 2008


--
Aaron Agien Nyangkwe
Journalist-OutCome Mapper
P.O.Box 5213
Douala-Cameroon
Telephone +237 73 42 71 27

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