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Western Sahara Conflict: Moroccan Ministry
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Most of the people of Western Sahara live in harsh conditions in desert refugee camps, first set up 27 years ago when Morocco invaded their country. Others live under Moroccan military occupation and hundreds have "disappeared".
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[I]t is worth noting that Morocco has explicitly recognized the applicability of IHL to the Western Sahara conflict. On several occasions, the Moroccan government petitioned the ICRC on the issue of Moroccan POWs held by Polisario past the 1991 cease-fire. On 22 February 2002, the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, calling for an urgent end to the plight of the POWs, invoked IHL, specifically 1949 Geneva Conventions.[iii]
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Human rights are repressed in the Moroccan-controlled territories of Western Sahara, according to Amnest International in 2003 and Human Rights Watch in 2004. [13] [14]. While the situation has improved since the early 1990s, the political liberalization in Morocco has not had the same effect on Western Sahara according to Amnesty International in 2004. [15], when it comes to having a pro-independence position. There are allegations of police abuse and torture by Polisario-organisations. [16], and suspected dissidents are harassed.
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As of July 2004, an estimated 267,405 people (excluding the Moroccan army of some 160,000) live in the Moroccan-controlled parts of Western Sahara. Morocco has engaged in "Moroccanization" of the area, bringing in large numbers of settlers in anticipation of a UN-administered referendum on independence. While many of them are from Sahrawi tribal groups extending up into southern Morocco, some are ... non-Sahrawi Moroccans from other regions. The settler population is today thought to outnumber the indigenous Western Sahara Sahrawis. The precise size and composition of the population is subject to political controversy.
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Morocco has ... intimidated applicants in the Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara. Individuals who are to be identified in the Moroccan-controlled territory cannot come to the identification center on their own; rather, they are gathered in a central location and brought to the identification center in Moroccan vans. At the conclusion of the identification process, applicants are taken back to the central location, where registration receipts have sometimes been illegally confiscated by Moroccan authorities. This creates a situation in which the wrong people could later present confiscated registration receipts and obtain voter cards. The report of the under-secretary-general for internal oversight services dismissed this problem on the grounds that "MINURSO retains full files on all applicants, including their photographs and fingerprints, which could be used to verify the identity at a later stage."6 This does not explain why the U.N. has not investigated these allegations, which bear directly on the fairness of the referendum.
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There are therefore two main discursive strategies in respect to the Western Sahara. On the one hand, official sources tone down and depoliticise the evident discontent in wide sectors (both Saharawi and Moroccan) of the ‘southern provinces’, explaining these ‘maladjustments’ as simply social problems that have to do with the economic development of the province. On the other hand, and usually from more critical sources, there is an implicit acknowledgment of the existence and significance of separatist groups in the Territory, but whose foundations are ... presented as an extreme consequence of the socio-economic crisis. Both perspectives depoliticise the events. But both discursive strategies are based on the acknowledgment of the structural crisis in the Western Sahara territory under Moroccan control (and in Morocco, in general); a structural crisis that as such might even question the very nature of the hegemonic political system, including the Monarchy. In fact, despite the Monarchy being one of the ‘red lines’ in Moroccan politics that cannot be crossed, there has recently been an increase in the number of voices openly questioning it in one way or another.
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