Exiled Sahrawi activist demands a meeting with UN envoy

Exiled Sahrawi activist Mustafa Salma Ould Sidi Mouloud has requested a meeting with UN Secretary General Christopher Ross to voice his opinion on the Western Sahara conflict. Mouloud said the meeting with Ross would allow him to reveal the views of the Sahrawi people who he says have been marginalized by the Polisario Front for decades. The Polisario Front is a Sahrawi rebel national liberation movement working for the independence of Western Sahara from Morocco. The Sahrawis have been deprived of their rights to self-determination, he said, by the same exclusionary politics which he continues to suffer from in exile away from his children and family. “I have been living in Mauritania for two years awaiting settlement by the High Commissioner for Refugees after I was forcibly removed from my land where I was detained for over two months. I have been deprived of my children who live in a refugee camp for Sahrawis in Tindouf, Algeria,” he said. In his message to the envoy, Mustafa wrote “Sahrawi women, children and elderly have been living for decades in refugee camps. We should then assume that they are under the protection of the UN Commissioner for Refugees, but that protection has not been granted to them, because they have no proof of their status as refugees. They can’t have passports and if they express an opinion contrary to that of the leadership, they are met with the same fate as mine.” He also reached out to the Mauritanian foreign ministry expressing his desire to meet with Ban Ki Moon’s representative and he hopes that the ministry will forward his request to Mr. Ross and arrange the meeting.