Motion: Human Rights for the Saharawi

S3M-05399 Linda Fabiani (Central Scotland) (Scottish National Party): Human Rights for the Saharawi— That the Parliament notes the case of Aminatou Haidar, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, currently on hunger strike in Lanzarote, Spain, to where she was deported apparently for refusing to acknowledge Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara; notes her letter to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, delivered on International Human Rights Day, 10 December 2009, requesting that he and his government do what they can to persuade Morocco to immediately desist from the arbitrary arrest, torture and “disappearing” of human rights defenders in occupied Western Sahara, to free the prisoners of conscience held in Moroccan jails, including the seven human rights activists who were arrested in Casablanca on 7 October and are awaiting sentence in Sale/Rabat prison and to allow the United Nations to hold a referendum on self-determination for Western Sahara, and acknowledges that Aminatou Haidar’s campaign is not about the individual right of one person to return to her home and children, but about the collective right denied to the Saharawi people to live freely in their native land.