HRC: Algeria’s representative responds to Moroccan delegation's allegations

Algeria's permanent representative to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Lazhar Soualem called to order Wednesday in Geneva the Moroccan delegation regarding a new "souk propaganda" conducted against Algeria, denouncing its "customary theatrics" to present an unbridled version of the decolonization issue of Western Sahara.

In a right of reply to the remarks of the Moroccan delegation at the 52nd session of the UN Human Rights Council, Soualem said that "the propaganda of souk which we have listened to some excerpts remains classic," stating that the "kingdom has constantly improved in this area and is cracking month after month, week after week, with the shocking revelations reported by the international press on this subject.”

In addition, the Algerian diplomat said that the Moroccan representative "with the theatrics that is customary for him, tried to present an unbridled version of a decolonization issue, going so far as to seek to legitimize before our Council a certain conception of international law by invoking the existence of an international coalition that would be at one with him, the occupying aggressor, to violate the law and international legality.

The ambassador said that "this sleight of hand in which the representatives of the kingdom excel aims to remove any reference to the issue of the exercise by the Sahrawi people of its right to self-determination.”

A reference, he said, to which Morocco and the Moroccan authorities "are allergic when they are questioned about an unfinished decolonization on the African continent and against which they mobilize inexhaustible resources.”

Also, the representative of Algeria denounced in his statement "the systematic policy of corruption that has spared no international institution and which has just been updated at the European Parliament.”

“Corrupt MPs have cooperated for 25 years against millions of euros with complicit and criminal silence" in the face of human rights violations in Morocco, and "impose a blackout on the abuses committed by the Moroccan occupation forces in Western Sahara and the plundering of natural resources of this territory, against the advice of the European Court of Justice.”

He recalled in this sense the proven use by the Makhzen of the spyware Pegasus which has infected "both its European partners as well as its allies here in Geneva.”

Finally, the Algerian ambassador castigated the practices of the Makhzen regime against any opponent, by carrying out "coordinated attacks from several places in the world against Moroccan and foreign human rights defenders, journalists, politicians, trade union leaders and States, including Algeria, and by falsifying data and points of view in order to discredit any form of opposition.”

"When corruption is the DNA and the pillar of governance, a culture of denial and a policy of forgery, one is neither worthy nor legitimate to sit in the Council and even less to claim any democratic credit," concluded the permanent representative of Algeria to the UN Human Rights Council.