Lisbon, 29 November 2024 (SPS) - The 48th European Conference of Support and Solidarity with the Sahrawi People (EUCOCO) opened on Friday afternoon in Lisbon, Portugal, in a context demanding stronger international mobilization in favor of the Western Sahara cause, the last colony in Africa.
Participants at this conference, including parliamentarians, academics, journalists, experts, and civil society representatives, will address the main challenges facing the Sahrawi cause, particularly after certain countries, especially France, have "crossed all red lines by adopting the approach of the occupier and promoting it within the European Union (EU)," stated Oubi Bouchraya Bachir, the representative of the Polisario Front in Switzerland and at the UN and international organizations in Geneva.
This two-day conference comes at a time when the Sahrawi cause has achieved several milestones, including the historic ruling issued by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on October 4, which annulled Morocco-EU trade agreements for illegally including the territories of Western Sahara, regarded as "a distinct and separate territory" from Morocco.
Participants will also discuss human rights violations in the occupied Sahrawi territories and the issue of the plundering of natural resources in Western Sahara, he added.
In light of the impossibility of renewing the EU-Morocco trade agreements following the clear decisions of the CJEU, Morocco is attempting to directly involve certain multinationals in the plundering of the Sahrawi people's resources, the diplomat noted, calling for a legal and political response to this "dangerous operation."
Such a response "must include legal actions against certain European companies operating in the territory outside any legal framework, political actions within the European Parliament and national and regional parliaments to prevent further circumvention of decisions and ensure their application on the ground, as well as grassroots actions through campaigns to boycott markets selling products from the occupied territory," he explained.
Participants will also address the media blackout imposed by the Moroccan occupier to hinder the decolonization process in Western Sahara, relying on corrupt lobbies that influence international media to silence the voices of the Sahrawis.
On this occasion, the Sahrawi diplomat praised Algerian media and journalists for their efforts to amplify the voice of the Sahrawi people and to break the media blockade imposed on their cause.