European Commission Accused Of Complicity In Plundering Sahrawi Natural Wealth

The first day of the hearing of the appeal before the European Court of Justice on the legality of the fisheries agreement between the European Union and the Kingdom of Morocco witnessed a sharp debate between the lawyer appointed by the Polisario Front, Gilles Devers, to defend the rights of the Sahrawi people and to stop the Moroccan regime from plundering the Sahrawi natural wealth, and the lawyer of the European Commission.
Contrary to what seems to be the case, the Moroccan regime, as an occupying power, is not represented in this case because the Sahrawi government has filed a lawsuit against the European Commission for participating in the plundering of the Sahrawi people’s wealth by signing an agreement with a state whose presence in occupied Western Sahara is considered illegal.
As it is known, the text of the contested decision states that the fisheries agreement signed between the European Commission and the Moroccan regime is invalid because the party concerned with the case, which is the Polisario Front as the sole legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people, as stipulated in the United Nations resolution issued in 1979, is not a party to the agreement, while agricultural products and fishery resources extracted from the lands and waters of occupied Western Sahara are exported in the name of the Kingdom of Morocco.
In the opening session, the lawyer of the Sahrawi Republic, Gilles Devers, argued that this agreement is illegal because the party concerned, namely the Polisario Front, as the only legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people, was not present in the agreement, which means that the collection in exchange for these licenses to fish in the territorial waters of Western Sahara does not go to the owners of the legitimate right; It goes to the aggressor, represented by the Moroccan regime, which uses this money to finance its illegal and illegitimate project of Moroccan occupation, as reported by the Spanish newspaper “El Independent”.
In addition, Professor Gilles Devers believes that the agreements concluded between the European Union and the Moroccan regime constitute an “insult to international law” because, in his opinion, they “deprive the Sahrawi people of their right to self-determination”, which is recognized by the United Nations, but the Moroccan regime violates international law by not “respecting the permanent sovereignty of the Sahrawi people over their natural resources”.
The first session of this trial was attended by the representative of the Polisario Front in Spain, Abdullah Arabi, as well as the representative of the “Sumer” bloc in the Spanish Parliament (Congress), of Sahrawi origin, Taish Sidi, and the member of the European Parliament from the United Left Party, Serra Rego.
The lawyer of the Polisario Front stressed that the European Commission, by signing the fisheries agreement with the Moroccan regime and against the will of the occupied Sahrawi people, “ignores the fact that the products extracted in the territory of Western Sahara are imported into the European Union as products of Moroccan origin and are counted in the Moroccan customs tariff, as they are also counted in the Moroccan export figures”, despite the fact that the Moroccan presence in Western Sahara is illegal according to the decisions of the United Nations and the African Union.
Gilles Devers said in an appeal to the judges of the European Court of Justice: “From the refugee camps and from the Moroccan prisons where Sahrawi activists are detained, an entire city is looking at this court,” after recalling the history of Western Sahara, which was liberated from Spanish colonialism to find itself again under another military occupation, that is Moroccan colonialism.