In Las Palmas de Gran Canaria yesterday, dozens of supporters of the Saharawi cause and representatives of the Polisario Front in the Archipelago gathered in front of the Moroccan Consulate. Likewise, the Solidarity Movement of Europe has also joined this symbolic hunger strike that has lasted 24 hours.
With this initiative, they intended to draw attention to the unsustainable situation they have been suffering for decades and to ask both the Canarian Government and the Spanish Government for urgent measures aimed at complying with International Law, so that the Saharawi people can recover their national sovereignty from a free, transparent referendum, sponsored by the UN and with international observers. It has been a fast that everyone has undertaken and developed in the privacy of their homes, remembering the Saharawi prisoners who have been on hunger strike for 51 days in Moroccan prisons.
Responsibility of the Government of the Canary Islands
According to the opinion of the senior official of COSAL, Nahi Abdelahe, "Morocco will not spare efforts to continue blackmailing Spain with issues of immigration and drugs." He recalled that Morocco is declared by the UN as the largest producer of hashish in the world and said that "we all know the relationship between drugs and terrorism." "We have a neighbor who is the first exporter of drugs internationally and its relationship with terrorism is no secret," he said.
"He takes advantage of the misfortune of Africans to make a new green march, which in this case is not green, to pressure and blackmail the Spanish Government, to get more money and subsidies that will then be used to strengthen the Moroccan dictatorial regime," he insisted. According to Abdelahe, just before the meeting held in Seville between the Spanish and Moroccan Foreign Ministers, "Morocco provoked the latest waves of immigrants" registered on the border with Ceuta and Melilla. He assured that the Government of Morocco blackmails Spain by asking for economic aid and international support, in exchange for controlling immigration.
A natural barrier
In his opinion, the Canary Islands cannot remain oblivious to all this matter because, despite the fact that there is a natural barrier that is the sea, "it continues to be threatened with this Moroccan blackmail policy." The Canarian-Saharan fishing ground has always been a bridge between both peoples and the Saharawi community rejects the fishing agreement recently reached between Brussels and Rabat because the European Union (EU) "has mistaken the owner, since the natural owners of that bank are the Canarians and the Saharawis, and it is with them that it should negotiate."