Japan has reaffirmed its firm stance on the Polisario Front following the recent unauthorized presence of the separatist group at the preparatory meeting for the International Ministerial Conference on African Development (TICAD 9).

Yoichi Fukuzawa, Japanese Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, stated at the plenary session that the Japanese government does not recognize the Polisario Front and that the group’s unapproved participation in the summit does not alter Japan’s diplomatic stance or impact the forum’s objectives.
Japan also stressed that it only invites United Nations member states to TICAD Conferences.

The statement of the Deputy Minister constitutes a denial of the maneuvers of Algeria and the Polisario to obtain a pseudo-recognition from Japan, by solemnly affirming, not only to African countries but to the whole world, that Japan does not recognize the entity and that its intrusion into the conference does not change its position in any way.

Reacting to this incident, the Franco-Moroccan political scientist and journalist Mustapha Tossa said that this act “shows the extent to which Algerian diplomacy is prepared to use any subterfuge to try to undermine the Moroccan status of the Sahara”.

“By trying to clandestinely impose the participation of sadr in this meeting, the Algerian regime violates the traditional position of Japan which does not recognize this entity and which has never invited it to participate in its dialogue with the African continent”, he argued.

According to Mr. Tossa, “this regrettable incident was an opportunity for Japanese diplomacy to reiterate its position of refusal to this separatist misadventure sponsored and financed by the Algerian regime”. And to add that Japan has officially affirmed its refusal of such behavior, noting that this incident will push many African countries to seriously consider the possibility of expelling from their ranks the “polisario” which is beginning to poison the relations of the African Union with its international partners.

Japan’s position on the Polisario Front has been consistent over time. During talks in Tokyo with Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita on May 31 this year, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa reiterated Japan’s “consistent” stance on the Western Sahara Issue.

Referring to the autonomy initiative Morocco presented to the UN Secretary-General in 2007, she highlighted Morocco’s “serious and credible efforts” to resolve the Western Sahara conflict.

Previously, on July 30 of last year, Japanese Ambassador to Morocco Hideaki Kuramitsu, in a congratulatory message to King Mohammed VI on the 24th anniversary of the Throne Day, praised Morocco’s efforts towards resolving the conflict. He emphasized Japan’s support for Morocco’s autonomy initiative as reflected in relevant UN Security Council resolutions.

The Polisario communication also mentions other military operations, which, according to them, affected Mahbes and Farsia. It also refers to “heavy losses in enemy trenches”, without mentioning any civilian casualties. No mention is made of the Moroccan investigation.

An article by EC-Sahraoui, published after the Polisario communiqué, tempers the statement by saying that Saharawi elements caused no civilian casualties, and carried out attacks in the “vast Es-Smara sector”.

As previously reported and explained, the attack affected four impact zones in three districts of the town of Es-Smara. The first published and authenticated photos show traces of shrapnel on residential walls. The town of Es-Smara is located some forty kilometers from the defensive wall, putting it within range of a certain type of weapon used by the armed militia and consistent with the damage caused.

To this end, the Sahrawi Movement for Peace (MSP), led by Lhaj Ahmed Barikalla, is organizing its second international conference for dialogue and peace on October 27 and 28, 2023, starting at 9:30 AM local time. The conference will be held in Hall 04 April of the International Center for External Trade of Senegal (CICES) in Dakar.

Prominent personalities from Europe, Africa, and Latin America will participate in person at this event, such as:

H.E. Domitien NDAYIZEYE, former President of Burundi.

Mr. Jose Bono Martinez, former Spanish Minister of Defense.

Miguel Ángel Rodriguez Mackay, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Peru.

Adalberto Carlos Agozino, political scientist and President of the Argentine Institute of Strategic Studies.

Other figures will contribute remotely, including former Spanish Prime Minister Rodriguez Zapatero and former Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos.

In April 2014, the “Confédération Paysanne”, which is behind the legal harassment of the agricultural agreement in France, brought legal action before the Tarascon commercial court against the company “IDYL” – a company specializing in the marketing of fruit and vegetables from Morocco, including the Southern Provinces. The action of the “Confédération Paysanne” purported to prohibit this company from distributing these products and condemn it to the courts (penalties and damages for alleged harm suffered).

The decision of the Court disavowed the “Confédération Paysanne” on the whole line, in favor of the Company “IDYL”. This legal blow to the polisario and its relays comes a few weeks after the setback inflicted on them by the High Court in London.

“IDYL” succeeded in exposing during the trial, the fact that the legal action brought in the name of the “Confédération Paysanne”, is in reality only the action of a minority not representative of the Organization, deprived of any capacity to act in justice. Beyond the procedural aspects, the action – aborted by force of law – of this minority is a real blacklisting of certain leaders of the “Confédération Paysanne”, who do not hesitate to circumvent the own regulations of organization, for the sole purpose of carrying out political activism hostile to Morocco. In a real denial of democracy, they hijacked the legitimate authorities of the “Confédération Paysanne” and violated the will of its members.

“IDYL” claimed that the legal action of the “Confédération Paysanne” was not admissible, because it was subject to the prescription of the regulatory deadlines. The Court ruled in favor of the company “IDYL”, judging that the limitation period has indeed passed, thereby confirming that the aims of the “Confédération Paysanne” were hostile political activism, and not a legitimate legal action.

On this basis, the Court condemned the “Confédération Paysanne”, thus granting a legal victory to “IDYL”, which stigmatized the manipulations indulged by certain relays of the polisario, in the interest of well-known parties, and for purely political reasons.

This condemnation of the “Confédération Paysanne” by the Court of Tarascon is indeed a new defeat for the circles hostile to Morocco. The “Confédération paysanne” (to which the activist José Bové belongs) has repeatedly demonstrated its hostility and its dogmatic alignment with the theses of the polisario.

By attacking the agricultural agreement, the “Confédération Paysanne” was not seeking to assert so-called rights, but simply to exploit, out of sheer opportunism, an artificial controversy aroused by the polisario.

The court ruling only confirms the truth and confirms Morocco in its right. This judgment confirms, once again, the legitimacy of the action of the Kingdom in its southern provinces and the compliance of the development of natural resources with international legality.

The Tribunal’s judgment agrees with the position that Morocco has always expressed with regard to the indisputable legality of the Agreements concluded with its international partners and the need to ensure their legal certainty.

The judgment of the Court of Tarascon is therefore satisfactory. It did not recognize the right of the “Confédération Paysanne” and those who pull its strings to have any regard in the economic development of the Kingdom’s southern provinces.

The Tribunal did not allow itself to be drawn into the trap set by the “Confédération Paysanne”. He refused to comment on the merits of the case. By this judgement, the “Confédération Paysanne” is challenged and brought back to its real dimension.

As for economic relations between Morocco and the EU in the agricultural sectors, they are and remain favored by history and geographical proximity, which make their respective markets prime outlets for Moroccan and European products.
Since its entry into force, the agreement has been implemented in a mutually beneficial approach, as confirmed by the various reports drawn up by the European Commission.

In addition to complying with international law and European law, the decision of the Tarascon Court confirms a bottom line and consolidates the case law established only a few weeks ago by the High Court in London. The latter had effectively dismissed the polisario and irrevocably confirmed the legality of the agreements concluded by Morocco and covering its southern provinces

Local news outlet El Observador reported on Wednesday 14th December that the Uruguay government is “determined” to reinforce diplomatic and trade relations with Morocco, stressing that the Latin American country has “frozen ties” with the separatist group to open room for deepening cooperation with Rabat.

The news outlet stresses that the countries determination “necessarily requires canceling or suspending relations with the Sahrawi Democratic Republic.”

But the determination of the country’s new leadership to deepen strategic cooperation with Morocco “necessarily requires canceling or suspending relations with the Sahrawi Democratic Republic,” argued El Observador.

The reported decision comes just a week after a working meeting between Moroccan and Uruguayan parliamentary delegations in Rabat on December 5.

Jorge Osvaldo, Vice President of Uruguay’s senate led the delegation to Morocco to participate in the Euro-Mediterranean and Gulf Economic Forum.

“The talks focused on the state of bilateral relations between the two countries, the role of parliamentary diplomacy in clarifying visions and positions and opening a new page between Morocco and Uruguay on the basis of respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty of States,” the Moroccan House of Representatives said in a statement earlier this month.

“Both parties also expressed the importance of Morocco for Uruguay as a gateway to Africa and that of Uruguay for Morocco as a gateway to South America.”

If confirmed, Uruguay’s decision to withdraw recognition of the Polisario Front will mark another milestone in Moroccan diplomacy’s quest to isolate the separatist group as more voices, including those that once sympathized with the Polisario, hail Morocco’s Autonomy Plan as the best route toward a lasting solution to the Western Sahara dispute.

Over 28 countries have opened consulates general in Morocco’s southern provinces of Dakhla and Laayoune to reflect their support for the Moroccan position on Western Sahara.

The list includes the central American country of Guatemala, which opened its consulate in Dakhla on December 1.

King Mohammed VI has recently celebrated the growing support for Morocco’s territorial integrity, thanking all countries that have publicly endorsed the Moroccan Autonomy Plan and opened their consulates general in the southern provinces.

“I should like to say how much I value the position adopted by our brothers in Africa; approximately 40% of African countries from five regional groups have opened consulates in Laayoune and Dakhla,” the King said in August.

During meetings held with officials of the German Parliament (Bundestag), and conferences organized in Berlin, the delegation, which was composed, among others, of the president of ASADEDH, Ramdan Masoud, representing the victims of the Polisario armed group, and of Khira Khribich, who lived for twenty years in the Tindouf camps, testified to the different forms of torture and their consequences on the lives of the victims, and to the crimes committed by the militia against the Sahrawi populations sequestered in the said camps.

Ramdan Masoud also questioned members of the German parliament on the enforced disappearances and abuses perpetrated by separatist militias in the Tinduf camps, in Algerian territory, with the complicity of the authorities of this country and set out the details of the complaint against the leaders of the separatists, the illegal hosting of Brahim Ghali in Spain, and the conspiracy to save him from conviction for crimes against humanity.

In addition, other members of the delegation, namely Limam Boussif, business leader and associative actor, and Zineb Ramdan, young entrepreneur in Laayoune, focused their interventions on the entrepreneurial opportunities accessible to young people from the Provinces of south, and on the region’s potential for sustainable investment, green energy production, and fishing and port potential.

For his part, Shaibata Mrabih Rabou, President of the Sahara Center for Studies and Research on Development and Human Rights, stressed that the Autonomy Initiative, described as serious and credible in all the resolutions of the Security Council since 2007, was developed through a consultative process involving all segments of the Kingdom’s Saharan populations.

He also seized the opportunity to deny the allegations concerning the representativeness of the Polisario, by affirming that the only legitimate representatives of the population of the Moroccan Sahara are the local elected representatives of the region, of which he himself is a part.

This symposium was initiated by “Promotion of Economic and Social Development” (PDES) and “International Observatory for Peace, Democracy and Human Rights, Geneva” (IOPDHR-GENEVA).

Speakers familiar with the reality on the ground took turns to reveal, once again, the atrocities of which the kidnapped people of Tindouf are victims every day.
“The Algerian security services and the Polisario front are committing massive violations of human rights with all the humanitarian atrocities that accompany it, against the backdrop of the Sahara conflict”, the initiators of the symposium are indignant.

“Although the Polisario has acknowledged that human rights violations have occurred in the past, it has not provided clear data on enforced disappearances, abductions, extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, torture in detention centers, and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”, they noted.
What exasperates human rights defenders the most is that the Polisario remains an organization escaping all control, despite the serious crimes and violations it has committed since its creation.

The Polisario militiamen have made the Tindouf camps a rear base to order kidnappings, looting and arbitrary and terrorist attacks, claiming thousands of victims not only among the residents of the Tindouf camps, but also in Mauritania, Mali, South Korea, France, Spain and Morocco”, alerted, for the umpteenth time, speakers before the participants of the 51st session of the Human Rights Council, who came from all over the world.

The President of the “International Observatory for Peace, Democracy and Human Rights in Geneva” (IOPDHR-GENEVA), Ms. Aicha Duihi, denounced the impunity enjoyed by the Polisario to continue to commit crimes as its militiamen have always done since five decades of violations and inhuman treatment, the most notable of which were torture and arbitrary executions.

It deplores that Algeria, the sole authority responsible for investigating all violations committed on its territory, has refused to process or examine any file relating to violations committed by the Polisario.

The speakers agreed to underline, with insistence, that the violations of the right to life committed by the Polisario are imprescriptibly crimes and are similar to those perpetrated by terrorist groups operating in the Sahelo-Saharan region, far from the radars.

Through their appeals, the participants in the Geneva symposium once again broke the silence on “the forgotten victims of history who are still waiting for justice to be done, but also on other victims who continue to work to bring the truth to light, especially after the entry into force of the Algerian Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, whose objective seems to be to reverse the roles and alter the truth”.

The speakers at the symposium, whose work was coordinated and moderated by Aicha Duihi, were Emmanuel Tawil, professor at the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas; Lorenzo Penas Roldan, international lawyer for terrorism and international security cases; Sophie Michez, Lawyer at the Brussels Bar; Chema Gil, director of the International Security Observatory and expert on terrorism and international security issues; Maghlaha Dlimi, Director of the Dakhla media library and Mr. Naoufal Bouamri, Lawyer and human rights activist.