Matyas Benyik’s speech at the Extraordinary Congress of Frente Polisario at Dakhla on 9 July 2016

BMK

Dear Friends, Dear Comrades,

It is our great honor to attend the Extraordinary Congress of the Frente POLISARIO, Congress of Martyr Mohamed Abdelaziz.

The Central and Eastern European Alliance for Solidarity with the Saharawi People (CEE Alliance) learned with great sorrow of the death of Mr. Mohamed Abdelaziz, President of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic and Secretary General of the Polisario Front.

CEE Alliance always admired President Abdelaziz, because he had committed his whole life to the struggle for independence of the Saharawi people from colonisation.  He had remained strongly committed to the process of peaceful negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations, for holding of a referendum on self-determination of Western Sahara in the search of a viable solution, which has been dragging for more than four decades.

The CEE Alliance continues its active solidarity activity with the Saharawi people in its long-overdue process of decolonisation.

It is worth remembering that the Western Sahara is a decolonisation issue established by the United Nations in 1963 as a Non-Self-Governing Territory when Western Sahara was then a Spanish colony. This means that the Saharawi people should exercise their inalienable right to self-determination and independence and decide the status of their territory in a free, democratic and genuine way. Western Sahara is also well-known as the last colony in Africa.

There is no need to recall that the UN Office of Legal Affairs confirmed the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in 1975, which ruled that Western Sahara is a decolonisation issue and that Morocco is not listed as an administrating power of the Territory on the list of the UN Non-Self-Governing Territories and, therefore, MOROCCO DOES NOT HAVE ANY SOVEREIGNTY over Western Sahara. Morocco is simply an OCCUPYING POWER, and consequently its continuous presence in Western Sahara is illegal.

CEE Alliance denounces the silence of the EU in view of the violence exercised by the occupying Moroccan forces in the occupied territories of Western Sahara and demands the Kingdom of Morocco to allow access to the occupied territories to the media, the international observers as well as the European civil society.

CEE Alliance urges the European Council to freeze the EU-Morocco Association agreement and to withdraw or cancel the Advanced Status of the Kingdom of Morocco, for failing to comply with its clause 2 referring to human rights.

CEE Alliance denounces the illegal EU-Morocco Fisheries agreement approved on 10th December 2013 by the European Parliament which allows vessels from EU States to fish in the territorial waters of Western Sahara, a territory which Morocco military invaded in 1975 and continues illegally occupy in defiance of United Nations Resolutions.

The MINURSO, the UN mission for the self-determination referendum in Western Sahara, is currently the ONLY UN Mission that does not monitor human rights violations in the territory under its mandate. That is why the CEE Alliance demands the urgent establishment of a mechanism for monitoring and reporting on human rights within MINURSO’s mandate due to the significant increase of human rights violations in the Sahrawi occupied territories.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and rights advocacy groups have long called for the U.N. mission in the North African territory to monitor and report on human rights abuses, but Morocco, backed by France, rejects the idea. Some weeks ago Ban Ki-moon reiterated his appeals for sustained human rights monitoring in Western Sahara and warned against unfair exploitation of the region’s natural resources.

CEE Alliance confirms its commitment with the just fight of the POLISARIO Front for the right to self-determination of the Saharawi people, in our demand for the inmediate and unconditional liberation of all the Saharawi political prisoners. and ask for penal responsibilities to the Moroccan government by the criminal acts committed in the occupied territories.

CEE Alliance would like to remind that the use of force by the Moroccan forces, their crimes against humanity entailed international legal responsabilities. Morocco must be held to account for crimes of this sort and bear its legal and political consequences.

LET LIVE FRENTE POLISARIO! LET LONG LIVE THE SAHARAWI ARAB DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC!

Shoukran!

Dakhla, 9 July 2016.

Kategória: Benyik Mátyás, English | A közvetlen link.