DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The am­bas­sador to the Caribbean for the dis­put­ed ter­ri­to­ry of West­ern Sa­hara is urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment, and the wider Caribbean, to sup­port the Sahrawi peo­ple’s right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion.

Am­bas­sador Mo­hammed Zroug made the com­ment dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence, along­side po­lit­i­cal leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice and long-time trade union ac­tivist David Ab­du­lah, at the OW­TU’s Port-of-Spain of­fice on Fri­day.

Speak­ing on be­half of the Sahrawi gov­ern­ment, Zroug de­scribed West­ern Sa­hara as “the last colony in Africa” and stressed that the Sahrawi peo­ple must be al­lowed to ex­er­cise their right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion freely and de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly through a ref­er­en­dum, in line with in­ter­na­tion­al law and UN res­o­lu­tions. He not­ed that the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil has en­dorsed a ref­er­en­dum since 1981, re­main­ing the pri­ma­ry mech­a­nism to guar­an­tee a peace­ful and law­ful path for­ward.

Zroug high­light­ed the pro­tract­ed Mo­roc­can oc­cu­pa­tion, point­ing to more than sev­en mil­lion land­mines, re­stric­tions on in­de­pen­dent me­dia, and the dis­place­ment of hun­dreds of thou­sands of Sahrawi peo­ple. He al­so con­demned the il­le­gal ex­ploita­tion of the ter­ri­to­ry’s nat­ur­al re­sources, call­ing for re­spect for Sahrawi sov­er­eign­ty and ad­her­ence to in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man­i­tar­i­an law.

“The UN and African res­o­lu­tion on the Sahrawi Re­pub­lic must be ur­gent­ly im­ple­ment­ed,” Zroug said, urg­ing states and re­gion­al bod­ies to up­hold their oblig­a­tions to de­coloni­sa­tion and hu­man rights.

The am­bas­sador praised Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Gov­ern­ment and civ­il so­ci­ety for their loy­al­ty to in­ter­na­tion­al law and sup­port for self-de­ter­mi­na­tion, urg­ing them to play a more proac­tive role in ad­vanc­ing a so­lu­tion based on a cred­i­ble ref­er­en­dum.

He al­so point­ed to the up­com­ing Cari­com–African Union Sum­mit, sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber 6 and 7 in Ad­dis Aba­ba, Ethiopia, as a crit­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ty to reaf­firm com­mon val­ues and col­lab­o­rate on democ­ra­cy, peace, sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, and jus­tice.

“Let me just say that in these cir­cum­stances, the last­ing and just peace in West­ern Sa­hara re­quires ad­her­ence, and it’s pos­si­ble—ad­her­ence to in­ter­na­tion­al law and gen­uine di­a­logue with the Sahrawi peo­ple de­ter­min­ing their fu­ture through a cred­i­ble ref­er­en­dum. We call on all state and re­gion­al bod­ies to up­hold their oblig­a­tion to de­coloni­sa­tion and hu­man rights.”

Zroug fur­ther ex­pressed con­cern over the lack of lo­cal me­dia cov­er­age on is­sues af­fect­ing both West­ern Sa­hara and Pales­tine.

West­ern Sa­hara, lo­cat­ed in north­west Africa, was a Span­ish colony un­til 1975. Af­ter Spain’s with­draw­al, Mo­roc­co claimed most of the ter­ri­to­ry, while the Sahrawi peo­ple, led by the Polis­ario Front, con­tin­ue to seek in­de­pen­dence through the Sahrawi Arab De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Re­pub­lic. De­spite decades of UN-led ef­forts for a ref­er­en­dum, the con­flict re­mains un­re­solved.