Moroccan Sahrawi woman calls on polisario to allow reunion of families

Head of the Moroccan committee for the reunion of Sahrawi families, Ms. Gajmoula Ebbi, called international humanitarian organizations to press the Polisario (Algerian-backed secessionist guerrilla) to allow the free-movement of Moroccan Sahrawis detained in the Tindouf camps (southwestern Algeria) and reunite separated families.

Addressing the 31st congress of the International Women's Alliance, convening in New York, Ms. Gajmoula Ebbi, who defected the Polisario ranks and joined Morocco her motherland, related the raisons and story of her defection from the camps of shame wherein thousands of people are sequestered in lamentable living conditions due to shortage of water, medicine, human right violations and repression.

Gajmoula explained further the humanitarian goals of the nonpolitical and nonprofit seeking committee set up by a group of Moroccan Sahrawis.

The committee, she said, helps women who have fled the sequestration camps to reintegrate Moroccan society and contribute to the socioeconomic development process of their country.

As we perfectly know the hardship and discrimination suffered by the sequestered Moroccan sahrawis in the camps, we call the international humanitarian organizations and human rights bodies to act for the lifting of the siege imposed by the Polisario gang on the sahrawi people and for allowing the reunion of separated families.

The UN is planning to hold by next July a self-determination referendum in the Sahara, a former Spanish colony, retrieved by Morocco in 1975 under the Madrid Accords. The voting will determine whether the Sahara remains part of Morocco or sets up on its own.