POLISARIO takes part in second Syriza Congress Party

 Frente POLISARIO delegation headed by Minister Delegate to European Union, Mr. Mohamed Sidati participated on the second congress of Syriza Party held from 13-16 October in Athens.

Minister Delegate to EU, in his address to the participants, said that despite the UN, AU successive efforts, Morocco remains unwilling to accept UN-supervised referendum on self-determination to people of Western Sahara, Noting that Morocco has also challenged the authority of the UN mission in Western Sahara, MINURSO, and has repeatedly violated the cease-fire agreement between the two parties to the conflict.

Moreover, Mohamed Sidati went on saying that Morocco has committed massive violations of human rights of Sahrawi civilians in the occupied territories documented by many international organisations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Robert F. Kennedy Centre for Justice and Human Rights, underlining that there are now over 60 Sahrawi political prisoners detained following the peaceful protest camp of Gdeim Izik in November 2010, which was described by Noam Chomsky as the beginning of the Arab Spring.

 “The entire Sahrawi occupied territories are put under a military siege and a media blackout where international observers and media are banned from entering the Territory that remains encircled by the 2700 km Moroccan military wall,” Sahrawi diplomat added in his speech  

He also pointed out that Morocco persists in exploiting illegally and massively the natural resources of Western Sahara including fisheries, phosphates and other minerals, often in complicity with foreign entities, including unfortunately countries and institutions from the European Union, recalling that the European General Court confirmed this fact in its ruling of December 2015 when it underscored that Morocco had no sovereignty over Western Sahara and that the EU-Morocco agreement on agricultural products was illegal because it involved Western Sahara.

In this regard, he called once again on the European Union, of which Greece is a member state, to refrain from engaging in any transaction of any kind that may affect the territory or waters of Western Sahara, because that will be a clear violation of basic norms of international law relating to Non-Self-Governing Territories.

Mohamed Sidati concluded his intervention in the said congress: we also believe that Greece, under SYRIZA’s dynamic leadership, can play an active and positive role, within the European Union and in the international arena, in supporting the international efforts aiming at achieving a peaceful and lasting solution to the conflict in Western Sahara based on the exercise by the Sahrawi people of their inalienable right to self-determination and independence. 

SPS