The Polisario does not lose its bad habits. Any protest whatever its objectives and motivations are, is fiercely suppressed and nipped in the bud. Since the re-election during the 13th Congress in the ghost locality of Tifariti (90 km at the West of Tindouf), for his 11th consecutive mandate, the Polisario leadership in the person of Mohamed Abdelaziz is highly opposed inside and outside Tindouf camps.
For the young indignated Sahrawis, all the means are good to denounce the legitimacy of those leading them. Regrouped inside the movement of the young people of the Sahrawi revolution, hundreds of young idle people observed since many days a sit-in barricading the main entry of the Hassi Raboni camp hosting the Polisario HQ. In a temporary camp built on the way, the young protesters have written in great letters and along the tarred pavement the slogan “clear off”, addressed to the Polisario chief.

The opposition to the Polisario chief, Mohamed Abdelaziz, is getting stronger in Tindouf camps in Algeria, in parallel with the fear of reprisals against the young militants of the Sahrawi revolution. The audacious actions led by the latter, have particularly irritated the Polisario leader who was elected at the head of the Front for the 11th successive mandate without interruption since 35 years. A wave of arrests and intimidations has been launched against many opponents after the writing down, in big characters on the whole width of the road leading to the Polisario general secretariat’s headquarters, of the word “irhal” meaning clear off in Arabic.

The precarious life conditions of thousands of Sahrawi refugees in the Algerian desert leave no indifference. Fortunately, there are some associations and NGOs dedicated to human rights defense, to remind the international community of a population representing thousands of people and living in deprivation, suffering and atrocities in all its forms under the leadership of torturers and the armed militia who do not know any pity or human rights respect. This Monday, a feminine Sahrawi association based in Spain has taken the initiative to denounce the inhuman conditions imposed by the Polisario leadership  to the sequestrated populations in Tindouf camps (South-West of Algeria). In a release broadcasted on Monday, “the Association of Sahrawi women for democracy and human rights” condemns these injustices and inhuman practices.

The election of Monced Marzouki to the presidency of the Tunisian Republic comes like a revenge of this strong human rights defender and fierce opponent to the regime of the fallen president Ben Ali. In itself, the election was not a surprise. The victorious troika of the elections agreed to share the three key positions of the after-revolution period: the government presidency, the Constituent Nation Assembly, in charge of preparing the new constitution of the country, and the presidency of the Republic. These positions were given successively to the Islamist party Ennahda, the Ettakatol (social-democratic) party and the Congress for the Republic (CPR), the nationalist left party founded in 2001 by Moncef Marzouki. It is in 1979 that Marzouki rejoined the Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH) which was just created. His militancy will take him, one decade after, at the head of the League. It is this unconditional commitment for the human rights cause which will bring him Ben Ali’s thwart. After some years, he decided to seek exile in France, tired by the persecution and harassment of the political police.

Amnesty International gets alarmed about a draft law on associations, which is presently subject of debate at the Algerian Parliament, and which makes the whole associative tissue worried. The Amnesty International office in Algiers denounces the fact that the draft law questions “the universal principle of freedom of associations, confirmed in international bodies and ratified by Algeria””. The project clauses threaten to suffocate financially the NOGs and associations. The collect of funds necessary for their functioning and sometimes even their survival, is from now on “depending on an authorization from the Administration, never obtained” declares indignantly the bureau of the international organization in Algiers. The conditions of cessation and dissolution of associations are also deplored by Amnesty. For the international NGO, “the procedure of cessation and dissolution of associations, according to the new clauses, reinforces, in a drastic way, the putting of the associative field under supervision”.