Washington DC- Spain would collapse if the Basque, Catalan, and Galician nationalists could unite. Yet, the Galician Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Ana Miranda Paz chose to spend her energy supporting Sahrawi’s independence at the expense of her secessionist cause. The Spanish politicians’ double standards in support of self-determination are pure intellectual dishonesty.
While European Parliamentarians have no appetite for regional nationalism in Europe, they promote the concept in the rest of the world as a new colonial tool to weaken developing countries. Otherwise, how do Ms. Miranda and her Greens explain their meek support of European secessionist groups in Spain, France, Scotland, and Belgium?
Ms. Miranda and her friends in the Group of Greens should worry first about the self-determination struggles in Europe before getting involved in the affairs of others. It is obvious that this MEP, whose own nationalist secessionist political agenda has failed, is looking for some pet project to keep the Galician “dream” alive.
Instead of worrying about Sahrawis, Miranda should fight for the rights of the many Catalan leaders who have been imprisoned in her own country or become fugitives from the Spanish justice.
The Galician nationalists should form a Catalan-Basque-Galician European Parliamentary Intergroup to push for an investigation into their own government’s violent handling of the 2017 Catalan referendum on secession.
In the name of self-determination, MEP Miranda with her European Left and Greens should call for the safe return of former president of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont who is currently a political refugee in Belgium.
The European Left’s obsession with Morocco and Western Sahara is a smoke screen to justify their failures in protecting the secessionist movements in Western Europe.
The Catalans, the Basques, and the Corsicans should be on the top of the European Free Alliance’s list of oppressed groups who need protection from their central governments. Before helping the “poor” Sahrawis, Europeans in general, and the Spaniards, in particular, should clean their own house.
How dare Ana Miranda and other Spanish politicians on the left and extreme Right talk about Sahrawi self-determination when “la Guardia civil” beats up on peaceful Catalan protesters calling for a free Catalina?
Has Miss Miranda and her colleagues forgotten the images of “La Guardia Civil’ savagely attacking Catalan civilians in 2017? Where was the outrage against the repression of the Catalan people?
The Spanish Left and Greens’ accusation against Morocco “of illegal occupation, of torture, repression and violation of freedom of expression” is dishonest and self-serving since Madrid has committed these same crimes against nationalists in Catalonia, the Basque region, and in Galicia.
The human rights conditions in Morocco are not perfect, yet pro-independence Sahrawi activists have more freedom in Morocco than Catalan nationalists do in Spain.
It is not the “geopolitical games of Morocco, with the consent of some European powers, which have left the Saharawi people in living critical precarious conditions’’. The intransigence of the Algerian military junta, whom Miranda and her comrades choose to protect, is behind the sequestration of thousands of civilians under inhumane conditions in Algeria’s Tindouf camps.
The European Parliament’s selective support of self-determination is an indicator of the intellectual duplicity of the European left. While MEPs encourage European integration, they encourage non-European separatist movements hampering the development of poorer nations.
Hassan Masiky is a freelance writer based in Washington DC. You can follow Hassan on Twitter @elmagharibi.
