PUSL.- Brazil imports 25% of Moroccan phosphate, through the Moroccan state company OCP which operates illegally in the occupied territories of Western Sahara without the consent of the Saharawi people. Not content with illegal imports whose profit sustains the illegal and criminal occupation of a country, Brazil agreed at the beginning of this year with the Moroccan group, OCP, to set up a new factory in Brazil to manufacture phosphate products.
OCP is already a major supplier of phosphates, including with headquarters and operations in Brazil, and wants to strengthen its presence and illegal exports.
The announcement of this new plant was made by OCP Group President and CEO Mostafa Terrab during a meeting in Rabat with Brazil’s Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply Marcos Montes in June this year. The Moroccan company’s factory is expected to be built in São Luís, Maranhão.
The president of OCP Fertilizers in Brazil, Olavio Takenaka, told ANBA (The Brazil-Arab News Agency), that it will be the company’s first phosphate plant in Brazil and that the products will be made with phosphate rock imported from Morocco (read Morocco and occupied territories of Western Sahara).
The project is underway and the company already owns the land, six kilometres from the Port of Itaqui, in Maranhão. According to the latest statements of the executive, the Engineering project was being finalised so that the authorities could approve it.
The meeting with the Moroccan government and OCP was attended by Julio Bitelli, Brazil’s ambassador to Morocco, Nilson Guimarães, agricultural attaché at the embassy, and Celso Moretti, president of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), executives from the Ministry of Agriculture and the Brazilian Secretariat for Strategic Affairs, the Organisation of Brazilian Cooperatives (OCB) and the National Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock (CNA). The Brazilian Minister of Agriculture went to Morocco at the same time, to increase the import of phosphate.
In 1976, after the occupation of Western Sahara, Morocco immediately took control of the mine of Phos Boucraa (Boucraa-El Aaiun) previously exploited by Spain.
Western Sahara being a non-self-governing territory, the mining by a foreign state actor is illegal under international law. As a result, several funds were divested from buyers of phosphate mined at Phos Boucraa, and exports decreased. Ships carrying the stolen phosphates (also called Blood Phosphates) have been seized or detained at various international Ports. In 2017, the Sahrawi government pursued civil legal proceedings against separate cargoes of phosphate rock, successfully detaining freighters in Panama and South Africa. In determining that the cargo would be the sovereign resource of the Sahrawi government and people, the South African High Court noted that Western Sahara is an occupied territory under international law and that Morocco and its state-owned companies could not legally intend to sell the goods.
Just as in Portuguese colonisation in Brazil which had as its main characteristics: to clear, exterminate, exploit, populate, conquer and subjugate the indigenous people and their wealth, so Morocco behaves towards the Saharawis.
Despite the distance in centuries, the crimes are the same, only adapted to new technologies and realities. If the Brazilian people still repudiate colonialism, one cannot understand how the Brazilian government and institutions are now supporting and financing directly under the guise of “business” the Moroccan occupation and the expropriation and genocide of the people of Western Sahara.
