Morocco wants UN to probe violence in Sahara camps

RABAT, June 2 (Reuters) Morocco has urged the United Nations to conduct an inquiry into what it called ''bloody repression'' in camps in neighbouring Algeria housing refugees from the Western Sahara conflict, Moroccan state news agency MAP reported.

It said 15 people were injured, five of them seriously, in protests that began on Tuesday following the departure of a team from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The violence was sparked by an attack on a tribal leader by elements of the Polisario movement, which controls the camps, MAP said.

''Morocco has addressed a letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in which it alerts the international community to the bloody repression to which the populations of Tindouf have fallen victim and calls for an inquiry into these violations,'' said MAP.

The refugees have spent decades in a limbo-like existence in the desert camps near the town of Tindouf since Morocco's 1975 seizure of most of the desert territory of Western Sahara. The camps rely wholly on foreign and Algerian aid.

Polisario, which is backed by Algeria, fought a low-intensity guerrilla war against Morocco for Western Saharan independence from the mid-1970s until a U.N.-brokered ceasefire in 1991.

While Algeria accuses Morocco of being responsible for the camps by forcing the refugees to flee their homeland, Morocco says they are little more than open air prisons where the inmates suffer mistreatment and human rights abuses.

Polisario says it has tried to modernise life in the camps by promoting education and trying to eradicate tribalism and emancipate women.

In February, heavy rains washed away the homes of about 50,000 of the 158,000 refugees. According to the World Food Programme, serious food shortages often occur because of a lack of funds.

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