"Less than 20 pc of the inhabitants of the Tindouf camps are from Laâyoune, Es-smara or Boujdour. The rest are Tuaregs and nationals of neighboring countries such as Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad", he told MAP.

El Bihi, who heads the Laâyoune-based Sahara League for Democracy and Human Rights, pointed out that since the start of the conflict, the "Polisario" has been inflating the number of inhabitants of these camps to perpetuate this conflict and obtain more aid from donor countries and international organizations.

This is why the "Polisario" and its godfather, Algeria, reject the census of the population of these camps in spite of the pressing calls by several international organizations, he explained, specifying that the men, women and children held against their will in these camps are exploited by the gang of separatists who made this a real business.

This Moroccan citizen of Sahrawi origin, who joined the Kingdom in 2014 after four decades of hell in Tindouf, noted that faced with the "serious and credible" project proposed by Morocco through the autonomy initiative, the "Polisario" leaders, under the orders of the Algerian generals, "sell utopia and lies" to the populations of Lahmada to perpetuate the conflict and make the most of it.

These two parties have no will to resolve the Sahara issue because they have no interest in doing so, unlike Morocco which has expressed a serious ambition to close this dispute definitively, he noted.

El Bihi, who has been sent by the Polisario to study in Cuba, Venezuela and Libya, said that the Moroccan Sahara has "radically" changed its face in recent decades and experienced a "qualitative leap" and an "unprecedented momentum" according to all foreign delegations that went there, stating that the Sahara of the 70s, 80s or 90s of the last century "has nothing to do with the Sahara of today".

Emphasizing the "major" projects launched by Morocco in the southern provinces, under the leadership of HM King Mohammed VI, he cited the example of the expressway under way between Agadir and Dakhla, the "mega" project of the Atlantic port in Dakhla, the airports of Laâyoune and Dakhla, the desalination stations of sea water, the sports complexes, the hospitals, the faculty of medicine in Laâyoune etc….

He added that the management of the health crisis linked to the pandemic of the new coronavirus showed that the Kingdom was a "great" country which exports millions of masks to European countries, and a stable State which succeeded in absorbing the shock of this crisis.

The president of the Sahara League for Democracy and Human Rights also denounced the climate of terror that is prevailing in the Tindouf camps because of the "old guard" of the "Polisario", by denying to the population in captivity the rights of expression, movement and free choose of leaders.

"I spent 40 years in Tindouf and I never had the right to vote or to be a candidate in any election," he said before blasting over the wave of enforced disappearances and arbitrary arrests who targeted opponents and human rights activists in the camps, the latest of which was the conviction of an innocent 70 year old man to 5 years in prison without any legal basis or consideration for his age.

Once arrested, these people are victims of unfair trials before military courts in violation of international law and conventions, he said, condemning the silence of international organizations regarding the fear and repression created by the separatists.

El Bihi, who testified several times before the 4th UN Commission against human rights violations in Tindouf, called on the Algerian state to shoulder its legal and moral responsibilities for the protection of the population held captive in the camps, given that military trials and massive violations of human rights are taking place on its territory, and to get involved in the search for a solution to this dispute on the basis of the autonomy proposed by Morocco, a project "without a winner nor a defeated".

El Bihi also called on the Moroccan citizens held against their will in Tindouf to "revolt" against the "corrupt" leadership of the "Polisario" and to return to the motherland, and on the Moroccan media to face the propaganda campaign by the "Polisario", run and financed by the Algerian intelligence services.