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Nigerian Newspaper sheds light on the Saharwi issue

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Abuja(Nigeria) June 9, 2015 (SPS) - THE VANGUARD Nigerian newspaper published on Monday an article about the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, saying that the liberation of the African continent is is meaningless while a part of it is still under occupation as the case of Western Sahara

 

Vanguard underlined that the decade from the mid-1950s was one of independence for most of Africa. Independence  for many African countries was accelerated with the December 14, 1960 United Nations  General Assembly Resolution 1514 which declared that: “All peoples have the right to self-determination ; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”. The UN made no  exception,
 
 

the Nigerian widespread newspaper pointed out that the Saharawi people was among the African peoples to  demand their freedom and independence but connivance between a departing colonialist and its African collaborators has today made Western Sahara the last known colony in Africa. The Monarchists in Rabat had claimed that the former was part of ‘Greater Morocco’.   But the International Court  Of Justice, ICJ, had put paid to that  with   its 1975 findings that there was no evidence of “any tie of territorial sovereignty” between Western Sahara and Morocco.


 

The UN’s role in the continued colonisation of Western Sahara is one of its low points. After the cease fire in the Moroccan – Saharawi war, the UN Security Council in Resolution 690 of   April 29, 1991, established  a peace keeping force, MINURSO, in the territory with the mandate to “ensure a free and fair referendum and proclaim the results”.

 

The UN is unwilling to implement its simple resolution primarily because ‘the international community’ which is the European Union and the US, have vested interests in Morocco’s continued colonisation of the territory. Some European countries, in the name of ‘trade’ agreements with Morocco, are actively looting  Western Sahara natural resources, including its fishes and phosphate, added the article

we must all unite and fight for freedom in Western Sahara as we did in Apartheid, concluded the writer his articles. SPS

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