Communiqué from the Political Commission of the Left Bloc of March 23, 2022.
The letter from the Spanish Prime Minister to the King of Morocco, in which he states that the proposal for a “special autonomy regime” for Western Sahara, made by Rabat in 2007, is the “most serious, realistic and credible” for that territory, is a deplorable decision for all those who assume the right of peoples to self-determination as an unquestionable pillar of international relations and an affront to the Saharawi people.
Yielding to the blackmail either from the Moroccan monarchy – implemented in encouraging the entry of tens of thousands of migrants into Ceuta and Melilla – or from the United States – whose Trump Administration recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, a position reiterated by the current Biden Administration -, the Spanish State once again abandoned the Saharawi people to the hands of the occupier, in stark contrast to the official discourse against the Russian occupation of Ukraine and in favor of the Ukrainian people’s right to independence.
This change of position by the Spanish Government does not change the nature of what is at stake in Western Sahara. And what is at stake is compliance with International Law, which requires that no solution for non-autonomous territories, such as Western Sahara, is legitimate if it is not based on the expressed will of the respective people in an act of self-determination. What is at stake is respect for the repeated decisions of the General Court of the EU which ruled that Morocco and Western Sahara are two distinct territories, that the former has no sovereignty over the latter and that the Frente POLISARIO is the only legitimate representative of the people Saharawi.
Portugal – which knew how to face all the blackmail and make its own defense of the people of East Timor’s right to self-determination – must be consistent with what it said then and what it now says with regard to Ukraine: no solution for Western Sahara is legitimate if it is not result of an act of self-determination of its people.
The Left Bloc salutes the political forces that, in Spain, have repudiated Pedro Sanchez’s decision and expresses all its solidarity with the Saharawi people and the Frente POLISARIO, its only representative.
The Bloc urges the Portuguese Government to commit itself so that the mandate of the Personal Representative of the United Nations Secretary General for Western Sahara quickly leads to the holding of a referendum on self-determination in that territory, the only solution that respects international law.
