Moroccan Activist: “With Evidence… The Kingdom Has No Sovereignty Over Western Sahara”

The Moroccan blogger and activist, Hicham Chram, affirmed that Western Sahara is a territory still disputed between Morocco and the Polisario Front, and that the Security Council studies this issue every year to find a just, lasting, and mutually acceptable peaceful solution between the parties to the conflict, guaranteeing the Sahrawi people their right to self-determination in accordance with international legitimacy and UN resolutions.

In an article titled “Don’t Speak in My Name,” in response to those who speak on behalf of the Moroccan people about the alleged “sovereignty” of the Kingdom over the occupied territory, Hicham Chram said that “for a citizen to take a reasonable stance on this issue that respects human intelligence, they must ask themselves logical questions from whose answers they will understand that Morocco has no sovereignty over Western Sahara.”

He said in this regard: “If Western Sahara was ‘Moroccan,’ why didn’t Spain hand it over directly to Morocco, but rather divided it between Morocco and Mauritania? Because it is illogical to divide your homeland with your neighbor,” adding: “Why did Morocco recognize its new borders with Mauritania in 1975 and document these borders in a royal decree published in the official gazette of that year, in which it affirmed those borders?”

He further stated: “If Western Sahara was ‘Moroccan,’ why are there no common borders between Morocco and Mauritania, and instead there is a buffer zone built by Morocco itself with a sand wall containing more than 10 million mines that can explode upon touch?”

The speaker also pointed out the presence of soldiers from the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) in the Sahrawi territories, unlike other Moroccan cities, in addition to the absence of any elements of the Moroccan army, gendarmerie, and police in the liberated areas.

The speaker affirmed that the Moroccan political system is a totalitarian system that suppresses freedom of expression unprecedentedly, with thousands of young detainees in prisons for merely expressing opinions, asking: “How can the Moroccan regime convince the Sahrawi people of the so-called autonomy proposal under this repression and with many of them in its prisons?”

He cited in this context the “Gdeim Izik” detainees who were convicted with arbitrary and unjust sentences because they demanded the right to self-determination.

This was also stated by the Moroccan journalist Abu Bakr Al-Jamaï in press statements, in which he affirmed that the international community recognizes that the Sahrawi people are separate and have no relation to Morocco, and their representative is the Polisario Front, adding: “When Morocco approaches the international community to request that this people be under its sovereignty, the first answer is that you do not respect human rights, which has been condemned by the European Parliament and the US State Department.”