Sahrawi notables renew right of all Sahrawis to participate in referendum

Several Shioukh (heads) of Sahrawi tribes, elected representatives and delegates of women's associations have stressed on Sunday the right of all the people of sahrawi descent to participate in all the phases of the referendum that the U.N is projecting to hold in the Sahara in July 2000.

At a meeting here Sunday with a visiting delegation of Indian journalists, the shioukh and the representatives underlined that the referendum cannot take place without the participation of all Sahrawis.

They denounced the obstacles and maneuvers hatched by the polisario separatist movement --which is claiming the independence of the Sahara territory-- to hamper the identification of would-be voters in the referendum and jeopardize the whole referendum process.

The referendum will determine whether the Sahara provinces, a former Spanish colony retrieved by Morocco in 1975, would stand on their own, as claimed by the polisario, or remain Moroccan territory.

After they produced evidence of these obstacles and maneuvers, the Sahrawi notables and representatives renewed the attachment of sahrawi tribes to their Moroccan citizenship and their determination to defend the country's territorial integrity.

They surveyed in this regard the history of the struggle waged by these tribes, at the side of their fellow-citizens from other parts of the kingdom, to defend the kingdom's territorial integrity.

They equally underlined the unparalleled socio-economic development achieved in these Moroccan southern provinces since they were retrieved from the Spanish colonizer in 1975.

Some former members of the polisario who defected and returned to the homeland and some persons who were formerly detained by the polisario but who managed to flee made testimonies on the tragedy and sufferings endured by the populations who are sequestered by the polisario in the Tindouf camps in south western Algeria.

They asked the Indian journalists to inform the Indian and international public opinion on the reality in the Sahara.

The press delegation visited several economic and social facilities in the city.