[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Was Cosatu right about solidarity with Sahawaris?

[Patrick Bond]

(Looks like Peter W. should take a new message back to WSF int'l 
committee comrades and ask them to rethink, no?)

-------- Original Message --------

Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 11:54:23 +0200
From: Bongani Masuku <bongani at cosatu.org.za>

--- On Thu, 4/2/09, abdeslam Omar <abdeslam.omar at gmail.com> wrote:

From: abdeslam Omar <abdeslam.omar at gmail.com>
Subject: AFAPREDESA Position boycott regardinh Morocco meeting of the 
World Social Forum's International Council
To: "salah yahia" <muda0803 at yahoo.com>
Cc: "Mohamed Beissat" <beissat at yahoo.com>
Date: Thursday, April 2, 2009, 3:32 PM

Saharawi Refugee camps, April 02, 2009.

The Association for the Families of Saharawi Prisoners and the 
Disappeared (AFAPREDESA) position regarding World Social Forum’s 
decision to host next International Council meeting in Morocco

After consultations with the rest of the members of the Saharawi Social 
Forum, AFAPREDESA would like to express its deep indignation and 
astonishment about the decision to hold the next meeting of the 
International Council of the World Social Forum in Morocco.

AFAPREDESA’s position is adopted for the following reasons:

The holding of the meeting of an organisation as influential as this one 
in an occupying country that is daily oppressing the Saharawi people is 
a contradiction of the Charter of Principles of Porto Alegre, which 
clearly declares in Article 10: "The World Social Forum is opposed to 
all totalitarian and reductionist views of economy, development and 
history, and to the use of violence as a means of social control by the 
State. It upholds respect for human rights and the practices of genuine, 
participatory democracy, peaceful relations, equality and solidarity 
among ethnicities, genders and peoples; and it condemns all forms of 
domination and subjection of one person to another".

The hosting country of this meeting, the kingdom of Morocco, shows its 
scorn and arrogance in the face of the resolutions of the international 
community regarding the decolonization of the Western Sahara. Morocco 
continues its refusal to hold a just and fair referendum on 
self-determination within the framework of the UN-OAU peace plan that 
was accepted by the two parties to the conflict, Morocco and Polisario 
Front, in 1991. Worse still, Moroccan forces of occupation in the 
Western Sahara continue their policies of repression and terror against 
the defenseless civilian Saharawi population, a fact which has been 
proven by reports by international human rights organisations such as 
Human Rights Watch (2008), Amnesty International, the Word Organisation 
Against Torture (OMCT), and international bodies such as the UN High 
Commissioner for Human Rights (report of the 2006 mission) and the 
Ad-hoc Mission of the European Parliament to Western Sahara (report of 
March 2009), among other reports.

True, the various members of the Moroccan Social Forum have shown a 
great degree of maturity in making an effort to contribute to the 
reconciliation of the visions of the Saharawi and Moroccan peoples in 
search of alternative solutions, such as the establishment of the 
Maghreb of the Peoples–a move that we embraced, mainly by facilitating 
the organisation of the first Maghreb Social Forum held in El Jadida (in 
Morocco) without the participation of the party of the Saharawi Social 
Forum in Exile. Still, we are astonished that the Moroccan Social Forum 
has submitted an invitation to host a meeting of the International 
Council of the World Social Forum.

Unlike the members of the Israeli Social Forum, all parties included, 
who regularly and openly denounce the criminal actions of Israel against 
the Palestinian people, the Moroccan Social Forum does not express 
opposition to the crimes committed on a daily basis by the troops of 
their country against the Saharawi civilian population in the occupied 
territories of Western Sahara. Worse, some of the representatives of the 
Morocan Social Forum still defend the totalitarian, reductionist and 
colonialist vision in defending the notion of the so-called "Moroccan 
Sahara" while they know that the occupation by Morocco of a part of the 
territory of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic is a flagrant 
violation of the international legality and undermines the stability and 
progress of the Great Maghreb. The deplorable role played by the 
Moroccan trade unions is very illustrative, since they participate every 
day in the illegal exploitation of the natural resources of Western 
Sahara, especially in regard to mineral and fish resources.

For all the aforementioned reasons, AFAPREDESA launches an urgent appeal 
to the boycott of this meeting of the international Council of the World 
Social Forum as long as an end is not put to the occupation of Western 
Sahara.



Abdeslam Omar Lahsen

President of AFAPREDESA