Rabat – Morocco’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Omar Hilale, has sounded the alarm on human rights violations perpetrated by Algeria in the Tindouf camps.
Speaking during a UN Decolonization Committee (C24) seminar in Dominica, Hilale dedicated his remarks to responding to what he described as unfounded and provocative statements by Soufiane Mimouni, the head of the Algerian UN delegation. Mimouni had spoken of alleged human rights violations in Morocco’s southern provinces, prompting Omar Hilale to denounce what he described as the catastrophic human rights situation in Algeria.
Hilale exposed “one of the worst forms of human rights violations perpetrated by Algeria and the polisario” against the distressed populations of the Tindouf camps.
“There is an issue that deeply concerns Morocco in particular, and the international community in general, which is the military recruitment of children in the camps of Tindouf,” he added.
Holding up to the C24 audience dozens of photos of young children carrying weapons in military parades and military training camps in the Tindouf camps, the Moroccan diplomat lashed out at Algeria’s role in the Western Sahara conflict. “Algeria, which proclaims itself an observer of the Western Sahara issue, hosts training camps and forced recruitment of children as young as 10 years old,” said Hilale.
He added, squarely addressing his Algerian counterpart: “The Algerian representative claims that there is no evidence. Here are the photos and even videos from the alleged polisario’s own websites, showing dozens of children in military uniforms, even bare-chested, in training camps. These photos are terribly damning to his country.”
Hilale then confronted the Algerian diplomat with a series of strongly damning UN reports on the serious deterioration of the human rights situation in Algeria.
Reading to the audience some of the condemnatory statements from UN reports on Algeria, he added: “No country has been cited as many times in recent years by the High Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, as Algeria.”
He concluded by denouncing, among other things, the arbitrary arrests last year of 2,500 people, the unfair trials of 1,000 Algerian citizens, and the forced disappearances of leaders and participants of the Hirak, “whose only crime was the peaceful rallying for a democratic Algeria that respects human rights and political, economic and cultural freedoms.”
