International
The trunks of the Saharawi return that stayed in the Tinduf camps
Like all Saharawi refugees, Mestehia Jatri used the zinc sheets that make the roof in the houses of the camps of Tinduf, Algeria, to build her return trunk that would fill with bedens to return in 1992 to her native Western Sahara.
They never returned, but he keeps the ark in the yard of that frustrated longing.
“When they told us (that the referendum was agreed and close to being held) we were very happy and all the families began to assemble the trunks of the return. In each jaima you saw one,” he tells EFE Mestehia in front of his own that contained “that happiness of returning home.”
The trunks that the families kept represented for years in the camps the expected return of the refugee and the promises of independence but, while hope moved away, the needs for a life in exile increased. Most had to recycle the zinc sheets to re-make the roofs.
“Eight years after setting up our return trunk, we recycled it again and there are its veneers,” says the roof of one of his rooms Fatimetu Hamed, a neighbor of Mestehia.
“The UN has lied to us and left us here as refugees forever,” Fatimetu conveys a feeling of frustration.
Mestehia was born in 1953 in the town of Guelta, in the then Spanish Sahara, and today resides in Smara, one of the five camps built in the Algerian desert in 1975 to house those fleeing violence. Her husband died in the war between the Polisario Front and Morocco in the 1980s.
Like all refugee camps, temporarily provided for being a status that is expected to be transitory, it lacks infrastructure, industries, and its approximately 173,000 inhabitants subsist mainly from humanitarian aid in an environment of adverse climatic conditions.
The Polisario Front, a movement that fights for the independence of Western Sahara, manages these camps from Rabuni, a site that houses the institutions and where the international cooperative members who work throughout the humanitarian network reside without which they could not survive.
“The Saharawis are refugees for a political cause, they are here because their land is occupied and because the UN has not yet fulfilled its promise to resolve their conflict by holding the referendum,” says in an interview with EFE Buhubeini Yahya, president of the Saharawi Red Crescent, the main humanitarian organization in the camps.
“The humanitarian situation is very serious and is in a continuous deterioration due to the fall in funds,” says Yahya, who lists the cuts in the basic basket or the increase in the levels of malnutrition and anemia among women and children.
It foresees a few months of red alert “if the contributions of the donor countries are not increased.”
It was the year 1991 when Mestehia built his trunk shortly after the ceasefire that gave a truce to 15 years of war, since Spain withdrew in 1975 from its former colony and Morocco entered to control the territory that it now maintains under its dominion.
January 26, 1992 was the date set to hold a referendum of self-determination, eternally postponed.
The call was suspended due to the discrepancies between the parties – Polisario Front and Morocco – about the census and the lists of people eligible to vote. Despite the attempts of the UN and its established mission to organize and supervise the vote (MINURSO), there has been no agreement since then.
Morocco later definitively dislinked and in 2007 presented to the UN its proposal for autonomy within the Moroccan borders to resolve the conflict, a proposal praised by its main ally, France, and lately supported by the Spanish Government.
However, the Polisario categorically rejects it and maintains its commitment to the vote.
“We were very happy to hear that news (in 1991). The feeling of returning home and to our land, to reunite with our relatives who stayed in the Western Sahara,” Mestehia recalls.
They filled the trunks with food, clothes and the few possessions they had in humble jaimas, more designed to cope with the way back; but there was no return: “The trunks stayed here,” he says.
One more year, International Refugee Day has passed but the return continues to fly over the camps: “It is true that at another time it was much closer, but we continue to firmly believe that independence will come, as long as we continue to breathe and live, that dream will remain,” Mestehia sighs.
International
China shows at the UN its “condemnation” of Israel for the “violation of Iran’s sovereignty”
The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, showed the “condemnation” of his country against the “violation of the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Iran” after the air attack launched by Israel against multiple targets in that country, the official newspaper Diario del Pueblo reports this Saturday.
That media echoes Fu’s speech to the UN Security Council on Friday, in which he demanded that Israel “immediately stop all its military actions.”
“China (…) opposes the expansion of conflicts, and is deeply concerned about the serious consequences that may arise from Israel’s actions. The intensification of regional tensions does not interest any of the parties involved,” said the Chinese emissary.
Beijing called on Tel Aviv and Tehran to “resolve their disputes through political and diplomatic means, and maintain peace and stability at the regional level jointly.”
In Fu’s view, the Israeli attack will have a “negative impact” on the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program: “China has always been committed to the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and consultations, and opposes the use of force, illegal unilateral sanctions and armed attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities.”
This Friday, China had already expressed its willingness to “play a constructive role” to curb the escalation of tensions and facilitate conciliation, in line with its traditional position of active neutrality in the region’s conflicts.
The Israeli attack, which according to Tehran caused dozens of deaths, including senior military commanders and at least six nuclear scientists, targeted key facilities such as the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Numerous civilian casualties were also reported.
Israel justified the offensive by claiming that the Iranian regime is secretly developing a program to manufacture nuclear weapons.
For his part, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, promised a “severe response” and assured that the attack would reveal the “evil nature” of Israel.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres also expressed concern about the bombing, at a time when Iran and the US The United States is holding talks about the Iranian nuclear program.
International
Donald Trump’s government pauses its program of indiscriminate raides against migrants
The government of US President Donald Trump has decided to pause its campaign of discretionary roundings against migrants in certain areas due to its apparent concern about the growing unpopularity of these methods, according to The New York Times newspaper on Friday.
According to an email to which the newspaper has had access and the confirmation of US officials, the Executive has ordered the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE) to pause the beatings that affect the agricultural industry and the hospitality industry.
The spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed in a statement that “the president’s instructions” will be obeyed and the portfolio will also continue to “work to get the worst illegal foreign criminals out of the streets of the United States.”
The decision points out that this campaign of discretionary arrests to try to deport large-scale immigrants is harming industries and electoral constituencies whose support Trump wants to retain for next year’s legislative elections.
The new instructions were transmitted to ICE in an email sent last Thursday asking that “all investigations/law enforcement operations be suspended in work centers in the agricultural sector (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and hotels.”
These new guidelines come in turn after more than a week of intense protests in Los Angeles against this immigration policy and that Trump himself admitted that the raids seem to be affecting the agricultural sector, which in states like California, where beatings have intensified, depend almost exclusively on immigrant labor.
Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has implemented an aggressive policy of hard hand against immigration and as a sample of his Cabinet officials recently held a meeting with the ICE leadership to order them to carry out 3,000 arrests a day, a mandate that seems to be behind the intensification of the raids.
International
Trump says he knew “everything” about the attack on Iran and assures that the dialogue remains open
US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington “known everything” about the Israeli attack on Iran and that the dialogue on Tehran’s nuclear program “is not dead.”
“We knew everything and I tried to avoid Iran all this humiliation and death. I tried hard to avoid it because I would have loved to see an agreement,” Trump said in an interview with Reuters.
The US president insisted on what he wrote today about the attack on social networks, where he said he gave an ultimatum of 60 days to Tehran to reach an agreement.
“We knew practically everything. We knew enough to give Iran 60 days to reach an agreement and today it is already 61 days,” he explained in the interview, in which he said he did not know what the current situation of the Iranian nuclear program is after the attack launched by Israel, which also ended the lives of key military leaders of the Persian country.
Regarding the dialogue between the US and Iran about the nuclear program of the ayatollahs, Trump assured that “he is not dead”, that “an agreement is still possible” and also recalled that on Sunday a sixth round of dialogue is scheduled in Muscat (Oman) that they consider is now in the air.
“We have a meeting with them on Sunday. Now, I’m not sure if that meeting will take place, but we have a meeting with them on Sunday,” he said.
The United States and Iran have held five rounds of talks on the Iranian nuclear program since April, with Washington demanding that Tehran discard its capabilities both to manufacture an atomic bomb and to enrich uranium, something that the ayatollahs considered unacceptable.
Both Israel and Trump himself had warned of possible preventive attacks on the Persian country due to this refusal by Iran.
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