31ème Conférence européenne de solidarité avec le Peuple Sahraoui Assemblée générale 31th European Conference of Support To the Saharawi People General Assembly 31a Conferencia Europea de apoyo al Pueblo Saharaui Asemblea general
EUCOCO 2005 • MOL - BELGIQUE 23 - 24 - 25 septembre 2005

The 31st conference of the committees supporting the Saharawi people (EUCOCO) met in general assembly on 23,24 and 25 September 2005 at Sun Parks, Mol, Belgium presided over by Pierre Galand, Belgian Senator and President of the EUCOCO Task Force.

It brought together activists from the European solidarity movement and a delegation from the National Algerian Committee of Solidarity with the Saharawi People (CNASPS).

The 31st conference welcomed a large delegation from the Polisario Front led by His Excellence Mr Abdelkader Taleb, Prime Minister of SADR, composed of members of the Saharawi government, parliamentarians, and high-ranking officials of the Polisario Front, associations for women, youth, workers, human rights. journalists and activists from the occupied territories.

The 31st EUCOCO conference took place at a moment when, in the occupied territories of Western Sahara, the Saharawi people, under the direction of the Polisario Front, continues to pursue its popular resistance and peaceful demonstrations against Moroccan occupation.

In view of this, the 31st conference decided to align its present and future actions within the framework of the movement of popular resistance of the Saharawi people, particularly in the occupied territories and against the systematic human rights abuses by Morocco in the occupied territories : repression, arrests, abductions, practices aimed at silencing the aspiration of the Saharawi people to exercise their inalienable legitimate right to self-determination.

Thus the 31st conference notes that the Kingdom of Morocco continues to adopt a negative and colonial attitude, developing a strategy of confrontation and over-reaction as a permanent policy, which every time the international community registers some progress, erects new obstacles on the path of the settlement process. This was the case when Morocco refused to implement resolution 1495 of the UN Security Council which definitively established the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination and which protects the inalienable right of peoples to self-determination and the legitimate struggle of the Saharawi people and its proper representative, the Polisario Front, for the realisation of its national rights.

On the eve of the 30th anniversary of the Madrid Tripartite Accords, the 31st conference takes the opportunity to remind Spain of its historical and political responsibilities incumbent upon it in the decolonization of Western Sahara and ask it to challenge these Accords.

Concerning the release on 18 August 2004 of the last 404 Moroccan prisoners of war, the 31st EUCOCO conference welcomes this humanitarian gesture of great signficance by which the Polisario Front demonstrated its high sense of responsibility and its attachment to international legality.

It regrets that this gesture has not engendered a reciprocal response by the Moroccan government which refuses, systematically, to cooperate with the ICRC for the release of the 151 Saharawi prisoners of war and to provide information on the 500 disappeared, recognised and listed by specialist international organisations.

The 31st conference welcomes the solidarity of the Algerian people and rejects the unfounded accusations made against Algeria of blocking the case of Western Sahara and of putting on hold the establishment of the Union of the Arab Maghreb. It regrets the anti-democratic practices directed towards the actions of EUCOCO and the solidarity movement.

The 31st conference offers its support to the courageous attitude of the 35 Saharawi hunger strikers and calls on world public opinion to react to put an immediate end to the human rights abuses in the occupied territories and to protect people and property. The conference denounces the obstacles set up by the occupying authorities to free access to the Saharawi territories for parliamentarians, journalists and civil observers who wish to travel independently to meet Saharawi fighting for the independence of their country.

As a mark of support for the heroic resistance of Saharawi populations from the occupied territories and in favour of the expression of the inalienable right of the Saharawi people to self-determination, and following the conclusions of the various workshops, the 31st conference :

• Decides on immediate coordinated actions at a European level to denounce the untenable repression in the occupied territories, to support the determination of the prisoners and all the Saharawis in the occupied territories.
• Denounces the insufficiency of material and humanitarian aid to the refugees and decides, with a view to increasing this aid, to take action with the specialised agencies.
• Notes with concern the signing of a fishing agreement between Morocco and the EU which includes Saharawi fishing grounds and denounces at the same time the pillage by the occupying power of the natural resources of the non-autonomous Saharawi territory.
• Undertakes to promote the effort of the government of SADR to assure education and health for all Saharawis.
• Supports the promotion and preservation of the Saharawi people's culture.
• Undertakes to strengthen the means of communication and information in the occupied territories and in the refugee camps.
• Decides to strengthen its own capacity for information and to renew its strategy of communication to help its network for raising awareness in international public opinion become more effective.
• Undertakes to improve its capacity for coordination.

It was decided that the 2006 conference, EUCOCO 32, would be held in Spain in the Basque Country.

Mol, Belgium, 25.09.05

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