Moroccan NGOs denounce children's sequestration in Tindouf
Morocco, Politics, 2/2/2001

Four Moroccan non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have called Thursday the international community to denounce the sequestration in the Tindouf camps of children who are used as hostages to serve political ends.

The call was launched during a meeting of ngos held on the occasion of the preparatory committee for the special session of the General Assembly on children held in the United Nations headquarters in New York, by the Moroccan observatory for children's rights, the Union of women labor, the democratic association of Morocco's women and Bayti association.

The Moroccan NGOs invited their peers to denounce the use of children by opportunists for political ends and to shoulder their responsibility by decrying a situation that is contrary to most basic Human Rights principles and to the Geneva convention on the protection of civilians in times of war.

They urged the international ngos to mobilize all their resources and means to put an end to a situation where slow death is looming on the sequestered children.

The Moroccan NGOs pointed out that for more than 25 years, thousands of children have been forcibly detained in Tindouf, in south western Algeria, by an armed gang. They deplored the international community silence over this human tragedy and over the fate of these children, who were used in a political conflict and shamefully sacrificed by opportunists.

The Moroccan NGOs which denounced these children's jailers for their inhuman practices warned of this dangerous precedent in international relations where children are used as hostages to settle political scores and called international ngos to shoulder their historic responsibility by denouncing the situation and by helping these children recover their freedom and return to their homeland, Morocco.

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