Spaking at a conference held Tuesday at the Swiss Press Club, within the framework of the 51st session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the association’s leaders, Elisa Pavon and Bienvenida Campillo, demonstrated how did the camps of Tindouf become “the largest open-air prison in the world,” under the oppression of the polisario” with the consent and protection of Algeria.
The populations of the camps want “to escape to stop living in misery, without freedom or rights, in extreme climatic conditions and under the torture of a regime of terror,” they said.
Starting from the principle that “things are not as we are told,” Elisa Pavon and Bienvenida Campillo demonstrated to the audience what are the daily living conditions in the camps of Tindouf, where the polisario violates the rights of the population to a name and a nationality, to health, to quality education, to freedom of speech and opinion, and to protection against poverty and any form of violence.
“The polisario exercises its power over the population through a Law of Silence similar to the Omertà of the Sicilian mafia,” the Spanish NGO lamented.
The two human rights activists also described how “they have been victims of threats, insults and various practices of intimidation from the polisario and its entourage.”
We dared to break the silence and fight for the rights of a population living in a society indoctrinated by hatred and fear, where illegal trafficking has turned the camps into a hotbed of social inequality, insecurity and lack of protection,” they said.
