Taroudant, Morocco- Following the release of a series of videos filmed inside the camps of Tindouf, portraying the suffering of the Saharawis in the Tindouf camps in Algeria, the Sahrawi population started taking definitive actions to change their intolerable situation and break their silence after almost 40-years under Polisario rule.
Saharawi demonstrators in the Polisario camps in Tindouf, Algeria waved the Moroccan flags Tuesday and distributed flyers supporting an autonomous Sahara under Moroccan sovereignty, according to the Maghreb Arab Press.
“Khat Achahid,” or “Path of the Martyr”, an opposing party of the Polisario Front, said in a statement that, "for the first time in the history of the Polisario, Moroccan flags waved in the Saharawi refugee camps in Tindouf, and fliers with expressions supporting autonomy were distributed to people," according to the same source.
"People in the camps woke up Tuesday morning to find Moroccan flags were waving in many places especially on the dunes of sand surrounding the camps," the same source added.
The statement added that "the disastrous situation in the camps, the atrocities of the Algerian military authorities, humiliations they impose on Sahrawis in the camps, confusion, the absence of vision and the economic situation led the Sahrawi youth to this situation.”
“Khat Achahid” said that the Polisario armed militia led searches to take down the Moroccan flags and retrieve the leaflets that had been distributed to the Sahrawis in the camps.
“The Polisario arrested a group of young people known for their opposition to the corruption of the Raboni leaders who serve only their own interests at the expense of the suffering of people in camps,” the statement added.
The young Sahrawi activists of the movement “Youth for Change” called on Sahrawis to “break the gag of silence imposed on them by the Polisario leadership” and called on the international community to find an urgent solution to their unending suffering inside the camps.
Edited by Liz Yaslik