HUNDREDS MARCH FOR A FREE SAHARA

SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Saturday July 10 2010

HUNDREDS marched through Tenerife's capital Santa Cruz on Saturday in support of Western Sahara's struggle for national liberation.

by JAMES TWEEDIE

The demonstration, organised by the Tenerife Platform in Support of the Referendum, called on the kingdom of Morocco to honour its pledge to hold a vote on the independence of the north-west African nation less than 100 miles from the Canaries.

Protesters also demanded the release of Sahrawi political prisoners in Moroccan jails, a moratorium on arms sales to the kingdom and a halt to fishing in Sahrawi waters by Spanish trawler fleets – a concession negotiated by the current Socialist Workers' Party government of prime minister José Luis Zapatero.

Members of Sahrawi national liberation movement POLISARIO Front were joined by trade unionists the United Left (IU) party, the Canarian Committee for Solidarity with the Peoples (CCSP) and campaign umbrella group Assembly for Tenerife (AXT).

Many protesters waved the flag of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). A group of Sahrawi children bore a giant flag between them. The shrill ululating cries of Sahrawi women mixed with the staccato beating of drums.

The march paused briefly outside the national government's sub-delegation on its route from Plaza Weyler to the dockside Plaza Candelaria, where POLISARIO delegate to Tenerife Hamdi Mansur thanked the Canarian people for their “support, solidarity and good wishes.”

He vowed to continue the struggle until the “peace, liberty and justice” were won for the Western Sahara, before the children present sang the Sahrawi national anthem 'Yabaniy Es-Sahara' (O Sons of the Sahara).

The SADR declared its independence in 1976 and controls a quarter of the country along its western border. Some Sahrawi 300,000 refugees languish in five camps around Tindouf in south-west Algeria.

There are about 7,000 Sahrawis in Spain, of which 300 live in the Canaries, 200 of them in Tenerife. They were joined temporarily by 157 7-12 year-old children from the Tindouf camps on July 6th as part of the Holidays in Peace initiative.

Sahrawi resident Andalla Labed said: “We live in different countries but we are all one family and one tribe.

“We all all for one thing – the right to a referendum on self-determination.”

The independence struggle was highlighted late last year when Collective Of Sahrawi Human Rights Defenders president Aminatou Haidar spent 32 days on hunger strike at Lanzarote airport, after being denied readmission to her native country and deported on return from a trip to the US.

Western Sahara was invaded and annexed from the north by Morocco and south by Mauritania in 1975, by agreement with colonial power Spain on its withdrawal.

POLISARIO had already begun its independence struggle in 1973, and it continued to wage a guerilla war against the new occupying nations.

Mauritania withdrew from the south and recognized Sahrawi independence in August 1979, but Morocco immediately annexed the liberated territory.

A UN-brokered ceasefire between Morocco and POLISARIO in 1991 rested on the condition that Morocco hold a referendum on independence the next year.

Morocco has never honoured that agreement, and under present king Mohammed VI has instead offered only limited autonomy under Moroccan rule.

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