Tindouf: Amnesty Slams Polisario for Human Rights Abuses

Amnesty International has once again slammed the Polisario for shielding persons found responsible of human rights abuses in the camps of Tindouf, in Southern Algeria, and for maintaining these camps in total isolation and out of any external supervision.
This came in the report on the situation of human rights in the world, published on May 24 by the international NGO.
Amnesty denounces the Stalin like control exercised by the Polisario on the Sahrawi populations living in these camps. The abuses committed by the Polisario against these populations would not have been possible without the consent and complicity of Algerian authorities.

Amnesty International has been refused access to the Algerian territory to investigate into the abuses committed in the camps of Tindouf many times.
In 2010, the NGO’s request to visit Algeria to probe the case of the Polisario dissident, Mustapha Salma, was rejected. Mustapha Salma, a former Polisario security officer, was arrested and has been tortured for months before being expelled from Tindouf where he used to live with his family. His sin? He publicly voiced support to the Morocco proposed autonomy plan for the Western Sahara.
At the time, Malcolm Smart, AI director for the Middle East and North Africa, had disclosed that his organization wanted to send a team to the camps of Tindouf on a fact finding mission on the case of Mustapha Salma. But “our wish was never materialized in view of the refusal of the Algerian authorities “, he had said, bitterly. Malcolm Smart had explained that the “small section” of Amnesty International in Algeria was having “difficulties working in this country”. Amnesty does not want “a limited access to Algeria”. It wants “to access the whole Algerian territory including the camps of Tindouf”, he had insisted.

 

 

 

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