Periodista peruano en la ONU: “Los saharauis son libres en Marruecos y en Tinduf viven secuestrados”

"I had the privilege of visiting the Saharawis in the Tindouf camps and the Saharawis in Dakhla, in southern Morocco. The realities are abysmal", said the Peruvian journalist and internationalist, Ricardo Sánchez Serra, during his intervention at the IV Special Political and Decolonisation Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, which this year is chaired by the permanent representative of the Sultanate of Oman, Ambassador Mohamed Al-Hassan.

Sánchez Serra pointed out that "this experience is very valuable because I have seen it with my own eyes, it has not been told to me, it is not invented, nor is it known to me through propaganda. I have seen, I reiterate, in situ, these realities. I respect your work, Mr President, and that is why I am telling you the truth, the truth of what I have seen. The Saharawis in Tindouf are imprisoned by the Polisario armed group", he reiterated.

The Peruvian journalist detailed that in Dakhla, the Saharawis live free and freely elect their authorities and in the last general elections, "it was historic that the population of the regions of El Ayoun and Dakhla turned out to vote massively and democratically for their authorities, in a higher percentage than in other cities of Morocco, which is a strong sign of the unwavering attachment of the Saharawi population to their Moroccan identity and support for their institutions, development and a future with well-being".

Sánchez Serra told the ambassadors accredited to the UN that "the United Nations should prioritise the unification of the Saharawi families, liberate the population of Tindouf and support Moroccan autonomy, which the Security Council considers as 'the most serious, credible and realistic basis' within the framework of the United Nations to find a mutually acceptable solution".

Furthermore, he mentioned that this position is due to the fact that the international community has become aware of the profound changes that the Moroccan Sahara has undergone, in the last 20 years, with the advanced regionalisation, which is a constitutional principle that provides extensive prerogatives to all regions of Morocco.

"All this, the Security Council resolutions and advanced regionalisation, have rendered obsolete the theses of the Polisario, a movement created in the context of the cold war, Marxist, and which usurps a representativeness that it never acquired and which buries the separatist theses and which only clings to it because of its total dependence on its host country, at the diplomatic, financial and military level, which prevents it from evolving and renewing its movement for fear that it will become independent", he added.

He regretted that the Saharawi population living in Tindouf "will be used as cannon fodder in an eventual conflict. This confirms my thesis because the host, the abducted population of Tindouf, in 46 years, has not provided them with electricity, water pipes and decent housing", he stressed.

Since 2018, the Committee of Twenty-Four has invited the elected leaders of the regions of the Moroccan Sahara to participate in its work as legitimate representatives of the Saharawi population.

"It is worth mentioning that the Polisario has become a movement, which has not only diverted food aid to the people of Tindouf, but has become a criminal with numerous links to organised transnational criminal organisations that traverse the Sahel-Saharan strip," he denounced.

He pointed out that Western Sahara is a matter of Morocco's territorial integrity, with a historical and legal basis - which Morocco itself requested its inclusion in that Committee in the 1960s - and which, moreover, it inherited from Spanish colonisation.

He called on the ambassadors who are members of the IV UN Committee to "not be passing members, with recurring resolutions; but to make history and to go down in history with bold resolutions: the autonomy offered by Morocco must also be supported by you".

Sánchez Serra ended his speech by clarifying that if the United Nations allows the Polisario Front to talk, it is because it has 40,000 Saharawi hostages, nothing more than that.