The arrests of many Sahrawi demonstrators in the wake of the burning down of a Polisario’s building in Tindouf last week seem to have caused the opposite effect among the youths, who decided to harden their protest movement against the Algeria-backed separatist Front.
The Youth Movement for Change (MJPC), which seems determined to resist the Polisario repression, has threatened to resort to weapons in its struggle. In a videoed statement, the MJPC announced its intention to establish a military wing to defend its members and other protesters against the excessive abuses of the Polisario. The MJPC members underline that they no longer bear the Stalinist climate imposed by the Polisario leadership at the instigation of the Algerian military intelligence services (DRS).
The Sahrawi camps have been living for 40 years in the same climate of misery, gloom and repression. No dissenting voice is tolerated and no form of free expression can survive. The Sahrawi population is forcibly held in confinement and isolation within the camps. The rare occasions they are offered to leave the camps are limited to the family visits exchange program supervised by the United Nations. Many of the Sahrawis who visit the cities of Western Sahara in the frame of this program actually prefer not to return to Tindouf.
Those who return do so with sick heart because members of their families are held by the Polisario in Tindouf as bargaining chips.
But the youths do no longer support the collective punishment inflicted on the camps, as translated by the increasing protest movements against the Polisario and against its disastrous mismanagement of the Western Sahara issue. Many Sahrawis, including youths and elderly, criticize more openly the separatist Front for having pawned the Sahrawis’ cause to serve the Algerian political agenda in the region.
The MPJC and other opposition movements accuse the Polisario of having bogged down the negotiations with Morocco and no longer hesitate to publicly express their support to the Moroccan autonomy plan. For the MPJC, this highly difficult and poisonous environment is behind the rising revolt against the Polisario