Rabat – The Algerian government continues to voice its anti-Morocco position on the Western Sahara conflict, openly challenging the country’s sovereignty over its southern regions in the Sahara.
Amid diplomatic achievements from Morocco, Algeria has issued a set of critical statements aimed at the countries that decided to open general consulates in Moroccan southern cities in Western Sahara.
The first hostile statement came in response to Comoros’ move to launch a, which diplomatic mission in Laayoune in December 2019.
The second move came on Wednesday, January 8, just a day after the official opening of Gambia’s general consulate in the city of Dakhla, southern Morocco.
Algeria claims that Gambia’s decision to open the consulate in Dakhla is a “violation of international law.”
“Gambia’s decision constitutes a flagrant violation of the norms of international law, of the relevant decisions and resolutions of the Security Council and of the United Nations General Assembly relating to the question of Western Sahara,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Algeria said in a statement.
Algeria also calls the decision as a “provocative act that aims to undermine” the political process.
The statement is a replica of a similar press release issued by the same ministry against Morocco after several African states withdrew recognition of the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Democratic Republic (SADR).
After the opening of Comoros’ consulate in Laayoune, Algeria said the move constituted a “flagrant violation” of the UN norms.
The Algerian government, however, chooses to ignore the flagrant violations that the Polisario Front continue to commit against the UN resolutions in restricted areas in the region deemed as “liberated zones” by the breakaway group.
Algeria, a backer and arms provider of the Polisario Front, also ignores the human rights violations in the Tindouf camps, where Sahrawis live in alleged unbearable conditions.
In several protests and condemnatory letters, Sahrawis have denounced Algeria’s approach to blindly support the Polisario while it imposes strict policies on the Tindouf populations, such as restrictions on freedom of movement.
In a letter shared with Morocco World News in November 2019, former Polisario officer Mustafa Salma Ould Sidi Mouloud strongly denounced the lack of intervention from the international community to solve the situation of the Sahrawis in Tindouf.
“Everyone has the right to leave any country, including their own, and to return,” he said.
The former Polisario member emphasized the UNHCR also considers the right of voluntary repatriation as a “durable and most desirable solution, as it ideally allows refugees to resume their normal lives in their homeland and to restore their cultural and ethnic ties within their country.”s.
Despite all UN provisions that stipulate freedom of movement as a right, the Polisario Front finds the return of any Sahrawi from the camps to their homeland a “betrayal,” and criminalizes the act.
The Polisario Front sentences people trying to flee the camps to life imprisonment or death.
