Jakarta, September 25, 2010

To Your Excellency
Mr. Ban Ki-moon
The Secretary General of the United Nations

Your Excellency, I thank you for your kind and excellent leadership in the United Nations in order to keep peace and harmony in the world.

Through this letter I my self and all members of the Indonesian-Moroccan Friendship Association (IMFA) or Sahabat Maroko would like to express our concern to the latest development in Sahara region, north Africa. As we all understand, last week Mustapha Salma Ould Sidi Mouloud who held a rank of Inspector General of the Police of Polisario in Tindouf Camp, Algerian territory, was captured and detained by his own comrades.

He was captured by the Polisario militia when he was on the way home to see his family, wife and childrens, in Tindouf. Before the capture, at the beginning of the last August he visited his father in Smara, Morocco, that was separated from the family since the conflict in Sahara begun in 1975.

As we all know that in Smara Mr. Sidi Mouloud spoke out about his perspective in looking at the conflict. He urgued to the Sahrawi people in Tindouf to make a direct negotiation with the Kingdom of Morocco. He argued that the original dispute is between the Kingdom and the Sahrawi—not the Polisario. Therefore the two parties should make a talk in order to finish the three decades long conflict.

He also mentioned that he was willing to defend his firm convictions in spite of the “state of terror” that the Polisario leadership wants to impose in the camps, in an attempt to “conceal the truth”. He promissed to return to Tindouf in a bid to defend the Moroccan proposal for autonomy.

Your Excellency, we all know that the most price of this particular action is his own life.

I talked to him via a telephone connection two days before the capture. At that time he was in Mauritania territory on the way back to Tindouf. He told me the idea behind his struggle to liberate Sahrawi in Tindouf from the giant detention maintaned by Polisario and supported by the Algeria. He told me that he knows the risk of his decision. Nevertheless, there is only one thing that he has to do, which is telling his own people to join with their true family in Sahara Province, Morocco.

Your Excellency, I am sure that all of us are worried about his safety under the Polisario detention. We ask you to take any necessary action to make sure that Mr. Sidi Mouloud is not in danger. The Polisario and also the Algerian administration should open the gate to the international inspection to this particular case.

I also believe that with your wisdom, the world will see true peace in Sahara.

TEGUH SANTOSA
President of the Sahabat Maroko