DIGNITE

BIRDHSO Bureau International pour le Respect Des Droits de l'Homme au Sahara Occidental International Bureau for the Respect of Human Rights in Western Sahara Oficina Internacional para el Respeto de Los Derechos Humanos en el Sahara Occidental

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	Freedom & Justice for the 526 Saharawi Disappeared
	For over 25 years, Saharawi men and women have disappeared from the land of the living. At the wish of the King of Morocco, they live or die in jails and secret detention centres scattered around Morocco. We have counted 526 Saharawi Disappeared and, at the present moment, we have gathered information on 286 of them that meets the standard set by the UN Working Group on Forced & Involuntary Disappearance. These numbers represent around 1% of the Saharawi population as measured by the Spanish colonial authorities' census in 1974: as if, in a country like the USA, 2 million people had disappeared due to state repression. For years we have been campaigning &endash; often in the face of despair and indifference &endash; so that, even after disappearance, the Saharawi Disappeared will not be forgotten in our collective memory: the symbolic adoption campaign has been in action across Europe for 10 years, the UN Working Group on Forced & Involuntary Disappearance regularly receives calls to action, the UN Commission and Sub-Commission on Human Rights has heard many testimonies of survivors released in 1991 and many demands from NGOs for the UN representative to visit the well-known "secret" detention centres across Morocco. The International Bureau for the Respect of Human Rights in Western Sahara (BIRDHSO) has decided to reactivate the movement for the release of Saharawi disappeared and launch the international campaign Freedom & Justice for the 526 Saharawi Disappeared. Text of the appeal: We, the undersigned, ask the King of Morocco to free all the Saharawi Disappeared deliver justice to all those released in 1991 (care, compensation, sentencing and condemnation of the people responsible for their disappearance and their torturers) complete the list of disappeared who have died in detention, and return their remains and certificate of death to their families We, the undersigned, ask the Spanish government to ask Morocco for information on and the release of those Disappeared who carried Spanish identity cards take on its responsibilites concerning disappearances in Western Sahara, given that under international law, it remains the adminstering power of the Western Sahara today We, the undersigned, ask the UN Commission on Human Rights to demand that Morocco immediately and unconditionally release all Saharawi disappeared to approve the dispatch to Morocco of a Special Rapporteur on Disappearances, to investigate Saharawi disappearances, meet the families of the Disappeared and take measures to protect the families of the Disappeared from intimidation and ill-treatment, and to visit the detention centres where the Saharawi Disappeared can be found to meet a delegation of families of the Disappeared in March 2003 to draw up an International Convention on Forced Disappearance.
	Bureau International pour le Respect des Droits de l'homme au Sahara Occidental Case Postale 53 1211 GENEVE 9 (SUISSE) Tél. et fax : ++41.22.320.65.50 E-mail : bdh_sahara@hotmail.com Compte de Chèque Postal: CCP 12-12461-0 - Compte bancaire : Union de Banques Suisse 279-C3117839.0 1205 GENEVE

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