afrol News, 14 December - The city of Dakhla, the second largest in Moroccan occupied Western Sahara, this week has experienced new protest actions against the "Moroccan colonial policy". Equally, pro-Saharawi groups in the south of Morocco have staged similar protests during several months.

According to reports by the exiled Saharawi Ministry for Occupied Territories - based in the Saharawi refugee camps in nearby Algeria - a new popular uprising is taking place in Western Sahara. In occupied Dakhla, graduates, students, workers in the fishing sector and Saharawi women on Monday gathered in front of the seat of the Moroccan Governor's administration.

They had gathered to "protest against Moroccan colonial policy that aims at marginalising the Saharawi population by impoverishing them and forcing them to submission and humiliation", according to one of the organisers of the demonstration.

- We want to tell the whole world through all the peaceful means in our hands that we are living a critical human rights situation, the activist further was quoted by exiled Saharawi officials. "We are daily suffering arbitrary detentions, intimidations, forced deportations to Moroccan cities, restrictions on our most fundamental rights, and humiliation on our own territory perpetrated by the Moroccan forces of invasion."

According to the exiled Saharawi Ministry, "hundreds" of Saharawis had participated in the Dakhla demonstration. He added that "Moroccan colonial authorities" had "as usual surrounded the demonstrators and tried to intimidate them." No details were however given.

The demonstration in Dakhla comes after similar action in the occupied Saharawi capital El Aaiun and the towns of S'mara and Assa, which took place recently. Also here, hundreds of Saharawi pro-independence activists took part in what they have termed an "intifada" against the Moroccan occupation. Further, Saharawi groups have now started to organise Friday manifestations and sit-ins in all main occupied towns and cities.

In El Aaiun, the local Committee of Support to the International Campaign for the protection of Human rights defenders in Western Sahara (CSCIPDH), recently organised a demonstration and a march heading towards the headquarters of the UN peacekeeping mission, MINURSO, despite of "the obstacles erected by the Moroccan forces", who surrounded the demonstrators in an attempt to intimidate and disperse them, according to the official news agency SPS.

In S'mara, the spiritual capital of Western Sahara, a demonstration was recently organised by the families of political prisoners and reported missing and Saharawi graduates, who demonstrated to "demand that the truth be revealed on the fate of their sons, imprisoned or reported missing, and that the bodies of the dead of them be delivered back" to their families, the SPS report added.

In the town of Assa, located in southern Morocco but ethnically dominated by Saharawis, the local human rights activist Tamek Ali Salem continues to organise strong popular resistance to Moroccan authorities in the town. On Human Rights Day, there was "a huge march" in the town, Mr Salem told afrol News. "The participants were human rights activists, women, students, merchants and especially mines' victims," he added.

By staff writers

© afrol News

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