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JOINT COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sub-Committee on Human Rights) debate -
Wednesday, 20 Dec 2006

Human Rights and Political Situation in Western Sahara: Presentation.

I welcome Mr. Ali Salem Al Tamek, a human rights defender, who is here to discuss the current human rights and political situation in Western Sahara and his ongoing work. He is joined by his interpreter, Mr. Ray Mesoud and Ms Orlagh McCann from Front Line. We have had a previous presentation from Front Line, the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders. Mr. Al Tamek is a founder member of the Western Sahara branch of the Forum for Truth and Justice. That organisation campaigns for the rights of victims of torture and their families. He spent two and a half months in prison in 2002, where he staged several hunger strikes in protest against the conditions of his detention. He was then transferred to a different prison where he spent a further two years.

We are very pleased to have the opportunity to hear from Mr. Al Tamek. I draw to his attention and that of his colleagues the fact that while members of the sub-committee have privilege, that is not extended to witnesses. I invite him now to make his presentation.

Mr. Ali Salem Al Tamek

I thank the sub-committee for inviting me to appear before it. It is thanks to it that I am here today in Ireland as well as to the help I have received from democratic people and human rights organisations such as Front Line. I am grateful for all the pressure that has been put on Morocco by the human rights organisations, which led to my release from prison there.

I was born in 1973 and became a trade union activist and human rights defender. I have been imprisoned five times between 1992 and 2006 because of my support for the Western Sahara cause. I defended the right to self-determination for the Saharwi people and was a humanitarian rights activist. The last time I was in prison I was released on 24 April 2006. I had been arrested on my return from Europe, where I had met with many MPs, non-governmental organisations and other organisations in Spain, Italy and Belgium. As the Chairman said, I was on hunger strike for a month and a half while in prison. During my last period of internment, the authorities claimed that I was a psychiatric case and tried to transfer me to a psychiatric hospital.

This type of pressure has been extended to all my family. For example, my wife was abused by Moroccan police after she had hesitated to give them information about me and my friends. She was subjected to abuse and violation in a police centre by five policemen and she could not give an account of what had happened to her because of our conservative society and because it would have meant bringing accusations against the police.

Ultimately, we were able to get to Spain at the end of 2004 and there she was able to talk in a Spanish newspaper, El Mundo, about what had happened to her, but this interview came to the attention of a well-known Moroccan journalist. Now she is a political refugee in Barcelona, along with our daughter. My daughter was born in 2002 and I gave her a name that means “the revolution”. Due to her name, the Moroccan authorities rejected her registration in the civil register. Two months ago, I was transferred to Morocco, where the authorities banned me from going to Western Sahara.

My story is only a small part of the repression of human rights of the Saharan people. There are many unfair judgments against young people in Western Sahara. According to Amnesty International, there is a list of 536 people who have disappeared in the last 30 years. Many people, including women and children, have been badly treated by the police.

The Moroccan authorities have prohibited journalists and international observers to come to Western Sahara. Last October, an ad hoc delegation from the European Parliament was prohibited from visiting Western Sahara, even though it had signed an agreement with the Moroccan Government to visit the area. The UN human rights delegation that visited Western Sahara last May produced a report on the situation there. In spite of the report, the situation has not yet changed. Unfortunately, this repression occurred a few metres from the UN mission in Western Sahara. The NGO Frontline visited Western Sahara last May and has also reported on this situation.

Our struggle and protest in Western Sahara is peaceful and this is part of our culture and ideology. I am now in Europe and I when I try to go back to Western Sahara, I expect that the Moroccan authorities will arrest me again. I have brought many pictures with me that tell the story of what is going on in Western Sahara, and I can show these to committee members. I also have copies of many articles in the Moroccan media which were negatively written about me to keep me out of Western Sahara. In this photo album, Members can find many pictures of tortured people after peaceful protests in the streets of Laayoune, close to the UN mission, MINURSO, as well as in Semara. If committee members have time, they can also read the Moroccan newspapers. I thank them for allowing me to outline my situation.

I thank Mr. Al Tamek.

I have already had the opportunity of meeting Mr. Ali Salem Al Tamek and Mr. Ray Mesoud, which I appreciated. I have considered the information and want to correct a point in the briefing note provided by the Department of Foreign Affairs. It states:

No EU member state recognises either Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara or the proclaimed independent Saharan Republic. Instead, we regard it as a non-self-governing territory, whose final status has yet to be determined. Most African states, but few outside Africa, recognise the Saharan Republic.

This is factually incorrect and I will make proposals presently which will enable it to be corrected. The Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic was de facto recognised by a decision of the former Minister for Foreign Affairs, the late Brian Lenihan, who instructed the delegation to the United Nations to vote for an annual resolution at the United Nations which effectively recognised the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic. Ireland’s decision in regard to the resolution at that time was followed by a changing of the position of Denmark and a number of other EU countries. That is the legal position.

The background is that in 1974 when there was a precipitous withdrawal by Spain from this area of the Sahara, the United Nations established a committee to consider the area of the Sahara and the Saharawi. It asked whether there had been a continuous relationship between the Sultanate of Morocco, for example, and the people of the desert. It concluded that while there had been a connection, it had never been effectively administered and, therefore, there was not a case for Moroccan rule of the Saharawi. The decolonisation committee of the United Nations and the United Nations General Assembly voted on several occasions that the Saharawi people were entitled to independence.

This was the old Spanish Sahara which had been occupied but which was being granted independence owing to international opinion. There was then a pre-emptive strike by King Hassan who announced La Marche Verte, in which he marched into the territories and announced that he had found a new terra nulla — an empty country — that the Moroccan people could enjoy. I have visited the area on a number of occasions, including places where prisoners were held and also the wall that has been constructed to separate the area where the conflict took place in the 1980s and the areas of occupation, particularly Laayoune. The Saharawi people were driven from Laayoune into the desert. Most of my former colleagues who visited the region, including David Andrews, the late Niall Andrews and others, visited the Saharawi people initially in the refugee camp at Tindouf as well as travelling to Es Semara on another occasion. I also spent time travelling to the wall on my own.

The point needs clarification. There are 80 countries that recognise the independence of the Saharawi people. The following statement in the Department's briefing note is even worse:

The EU's position is one of support for the peaceful resolution of the issue through self-determination, but in discussion of the issue there are different views held. France supports Morocco. What France does is supply the technology used on the top of the occupation wall. I had the experience of French technology picking up my presence as I walked to the wall through the minefield.

The Department's briefing note continues:

Spain had strongly supported Polisario, but has, in the last two years, given priority to its wishing to improve relations with Morocco and its moving closer to France within the EU.

The background to this issue includes the entirely illegal actions taken by the European Union in the granting of fishing and exploration rights in the territorial waters of the occupied territories. Privately, senior officials in the Union admit they do not have a leg to stand on in regard to what they have done. Both France and Spain have stated that direct talks between Algeria and Morocco would help in reaching a solution. Nobody has suggested he Saharawi people's lands comprise a region of Algeria. Saharawis have received support in the refugee camp on the borders of Algeria but are not part of that state. The United Nations has already concluded that they are not, historically, part of the Moroccan sphere of influence.

Having been involved in this issue for a long time, I contend that this background is being glossed over. There is occupation and the deprivation of human rights. The illegal allocation of fishing and other economic and social rights arises from a failure to vindicate international law. It is important to make this point. As I said, I had the benefit of a meeting our distinguished guests earlier and leave it to others to ask any questions they wish.

When I visited the Moroccan prisoners, I was made aware that a major difficulty was that King Hassan of Morocco did not recognise those Moroccans being held by Polisario as prisoners of war. To recognise them as such would be to acknowledge the war between an occupied territory and the occupier. Therefore, the prisoners were abandoned systematically by their own government for a long time. I am of the view that the Saharan Republic and the militant front, the Polisario, would have been best served by releasing the prisoners. I have always advocated this approach on humanitarian grounds and I am glad it was completed in 2005.

There has been some progress. The atmosphere changed with the ascension of King Mohammed VI in Morocco. The appointment of a distinguished person as chair of the commission on human rights in Morocco offers the prospect of some improvements. However, the reality is that not all prisons are visited. The headquarters of the occupying forces is in Laayoune which is located on the coast. It is in the old prison there that the confined conditions which are in complete violation of the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment prevail.

I suggest that the sub-committee make several recommendations. First, there must be clarification of the Government's position on the recognition or otherwise of the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic. The Government should bring to the attention of the United Nations Commission in Geneva the ill-treatment that has occurred and point out that the United Nations's visiting group failed to examine the prisons to which most of the allegations related. It should also make a strong recommendation, through the Moroccan ambassador in Ireland, that Mr. Ali Salem Al Tamek should not be arrested if he returns to Laayoune, as he intends to do early next year. He is not a person inclined to use physical force, as he believes in the peaceful advancement of the rights of his people. Moreover, the sub-committee should recommend that the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination should be placed on the agenda for the next General Affairs and External Relations Council meeting. Ireland should give assistance, if sought, to the Saharawi people and offer assistance in stating a case to the International Court of Justice in respect of the allocation of fishing rights, an extremely important issue. As for the International Court of Justice, the applications to it and so forth, international law would be seriously limited if only recognised states could apply to seek vindication of fundamental principles of international law.

I wish to add a footnote. Having been interested in human rights throughout the world for a long time, it is the case that bedouin people or those who live in desert areas are subject to the least vindication of their rights. However, in this case there is literature that provides clear documentation on the identity of the Saharawi people. While their circumstances have changed as the desert has changed, they are a people whom the United Nations has acknowledged are entitled to self-determination. In that moment in 1975 they were robbed of that historical right. Nearly 30 years later the European Union is behaving in a similar fashion for the sake of aggrandisement of some of its member states. For example, France has been selling technology to the Moroccan Government. Members should also remember that the Spanish Government reneged on its responsibilities in times of dictatorship. It is time for Ireland to take a lead in restoring this issue to where it should be. I refer to the circumstances of those who have suffered and died in the refugee camps and occupied territories. Women run everything because the men are involved in a war.

I apologise to the Chairman for speaking at such length, but I make these points because having been there, I am under an obligation to tell the truth as I see it. I discern an incredible fudge in the Irish position. When he spoke to me, the late Brian Lenihan was so convinced of the points I have just made that he rang the Irish delegation to the United Nations and instructed officials to recognise the people's case and change the Irish vote at the United Nations. Some of the permanent officials remonstrated with him and me in this regard. However, immediately after that decision was taken in the 1980s, several European countries followed the Irish example and gave de facto recognition to the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, as I do.

I apologise for being late. On the day the port tunnel opened, traffic in certain parts of the city is no better.

I have listened carefully on the monitor and read the presentation. I have also listened to Deputy Higgins's clarification. Clearly, there have been terrible human rights abuses in this case over which the sub-committee cannot stand. I concur that the actions recommended by Deputy Higgins ought to be pursued. I am baffled that the position of the Government, as outlined in the briefing document, appears to be at variance with the position as understood by Deputy Higgins. I presume this can be clarified. In so far as is possible, the sub-committee should pursue the list of actions outlined by Deputy Higgins. It would be part of Ireland's contribution to solving what is clearly an extremely difficult and intractable problem.

First, I apologise for being obliged to leave the meeting briefly. I had a brief discussion with Deputy Higgins and I am aware of his long involvement in this issue. I wish to inform the sub-committee's distinguished visitor that I have also taken a significant interest in events in the Western Sahara, albeit not to the same extent as Deputy Higgins. Over the past seven or eight years, I have been as forceful as I can in pressing for the release of the prisoners of war. I raised this issue on a number of occasions in bilateral meetings with the Moroccan chargé d'affaires. I am very pleased that eventually the weight of world opinion through the United Nations was able to force Morocco into releasing the prisoners and that the Polisario was able to release its prisoners. I understand there was a difficulty with both Morocco holding Polisario prisoners and the Polisario holding Moroccan prisoners.

I could never quite understand why the Polisario held on to Moroccan prisoners of war. These prisoners were, after all, combatants who were not there voluntarily and who were separated from their families for long periods of time. On a purely human rights level, holding on to these people for so long was a very bad development which certainly did not help create or generate sympathy for Mr. Al Tamek's cause.

I acknowledge and appreciate that there were difficulties on both sides. Having said that, I do not think anybody can justify the treatment to which Mr. Al Tamek has been subjected. As has often happened before this committee in the past, all I can do is stand back in admiration for the brave and courageous stance he has taken, which has obviously impacted very severely on his family, particularly his wife, who seems to be an extraordinary woman of great courage.

As has been outlined by my colleagues, I fully agree with Deputy Michael D. Higgins's proposals and endorse what Deputy Carey has already said. I am not sure if there is much more we can do in practical terms, other than that Ireland, as Mr. Al Tamek has heard, has taken a very principled stand on this issue. Perhaps Deputy Michael D. Higgins could confirm whether I am right in saying that during our period on the Security Council, Ireland had a particular role in this area? I could be mixing it up with Angola.

No. I have tried to describe the Irish foreign policy position objectively. In respect of the situation that arose after 1975 and the occupation, the Saharawi people anticipated autonomy in 1974. A struggle had gone on before this. While Senator Mooney was absent, I said that the United Nations commission had looked at where the ethnic sources of authority had been. It concluded that while there had been connections with the sultanate in Morocco, for example, there had never been an effective administration and the Saharawi people were separate. Following a declaration by the United Nations General Assembly, the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic declared itself a separate state. This was accepted by the African Union. To answer Senator Mooney's question, the issue regularly came up In an annual motion which came before the United Nations. The late and distinguished Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Lenihan, changed the Irish position from simply abstaining on this annual vote to voting for it, which gave the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic effective de facto recognition.

Despite people suggesting that this was the wrong thing to do the mandarins were very unhappy immediately after Ireland changed its vote, several European countries, including Nordic countries, changed their position and also voted for the resolution. At this stage, there were a large number of countries which accepted independence, which is where we were. We then come on to where we were in the Security Council. On the Security Council, one found that people tried to resile, as it were, from the strong position they had taken in Mr. Brian Lenihan's time. This became an acute situation when the European Union expanded to include rich fishing grounds and exploratory mining grounds off the occupied territories of which the capital was Laayoune, where the most notorious prison is.

I visited Laayoune the year before.

Yes. Most legal people to whom I have spoken regard the allocation of fishing grounds and exploration rights as an illegal act, but the European Union has tended to shift its gaze away in these economic circumstances. The assumption is that the issue will wear out.

I agree regarding another matter, namely, it has been my recommendation that the Polisario should unilaterally give up its Moroccan prisoners. However, former King Hassan refused to recognised them as prisoners of war, which served as an impediment to visits by the International Red Cross.

We are ad idem on what we would like to see. We want a recognition of the importance of a political solution to the general issue, but particularly to support our brave visitor, who has suffered torture. In the text before the committee and in accordance with his culture’s requirements, he has put a restrained version of what happened to his wife and family. I appreciate that even more. The committee is in agreement.

Absolutely. I do not want to delay proceedings, but I want to say that the committee can be useful in encouraging the Government's position, that is, we recognise the right of the Saharawis to self-determination. After all, we went before the international court following the First World War and were thwarted in much the same way. The big powers at Versailles refused to recognise Ireland's right to self-determination.

It is deeply held in our national psyche that liberation struggles such as that of our guest, which is justified, be supported by us. While I am pleased that Ireland supports it, our guest is aware that it is difficult to arrive at a political situation whereby there is a consensus on foreign policy positions in the EU framework, as outlined by Deputy Michael Higgins.

Ireland, albeit an influential member state, can only go so far. However, if Spain is changing its mind or loosening its commitment heretofore, it is doing so primarily for economic reasons, namely, phosphate mining. It always surprised me that Spain gave up Spanish Sahara in the way it did, considering its considerable economic benefit. While one cannot rewrite history, I have sometimes felt that the Spaniards could have had a more responsible attitude in withdrawing.

However, that was then and this is now and all one can do is endorse everything said so far and give our guest and his family our blessings, hopes and wishes that he will achieve what he has set out to achieve. While it sounds like a platitude, it is the best we can do in the circumstances.

Would Mr. Al Tamek like to comment briefly on what he has heard?

Mr. Al Tamek

I wish to thank members of the committee for their contributions. Members of the European Parliament visited the camps of the people's army in Tindouf, but Moroccan authorities warned them to avoid visiting occupied territory. This shows that Morocco has many things to keep from us in the occupied territory.

Do the committee and Ireland expect to help and support us in our human rights struggle in the occupied territory? This is only some of what Morocco has done in Western Sahara. We have proof that the Moroccan army threw people from helicopters in the 1970s and 1980s. If committee members come to Western Sahara we can show them mass graves. Approximately 800 people spent 17 years in a secret prison in Morocco. The position of the Moroccan authorities makes our struggle for human rights very difficult. We expect the help and support of the committee. We thank the members and ask them for their support regarding Mr. Higgins's proposition. Photo albums are available.

I thank the delegation for its presentation. Members are happy with Deputy Higgins's proposal. We will contact the Department of Foreign Affairs to seek clarification of the Government position on the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic and clarify any confusion in our documentation. The sub-committee will write to the Moroccan ambassador requesting that Mr. Al Tamek not be rearrested on his return. We hope this is of some assistance. Are members satisfied?

I wish to establish that the country has full ambassadorial status. Deputy Higgins states that this is the case but I thought relations were still at the level of chargé d'affaires.

Mr. Al Tamek

Thank you. I would like to give committee members a copy of the testimony of my wife and what happened to her. This is an article from a Spanish newspaper, El Mundo.

The sub-committee went into private session at 3.15 p.m. and adjourned at 3.20 p.m. sine die.
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