In the eyes of Yolanda Díaz, “Morocco is a dictatorship” and she said so, in April, before the cameras of La Sexta. In the eyes of Agustín Santos, his number two on Sumar's list, Morocco is “a co-sovereignty regime” between King Mohamed VI and his people. Morocco's 2011 Constitution, however, grants the monarch the bulk of executive power, and constitutional practice has further increased his authority. The sovereign is also Commander of the believers, that is, the religious head of Moroccan Muslims.
Agustín Santos, 68, until ten days ago Spain's ambassador to the United Nations in New York, is the star signing of the leader of Sumar, not only as her second on the list for Madrid, ahead of Íñigo Errejón (Más Madrid ) and Ione Belarra (Podemos), but also to advise her on foreign policy and international relations.
The number 2 of @sumar, Agustín Santos Maraver, says that human rights violations in Morocco are “individual cases”. Well, it should be reminded that the No. 3 of her party, @teshsidi, has a direct relative, Mohamed Tahlil, who has been in jail since 2010, and on February 17,… pic.twitter.com/fdtPSaxfOZ
— Jalil Moh. Abdelaziz 🇪🇭 الخليل (@JalilWs) June 24, 2023
Just before embarking on a return trip to Madrid to join the electoral campaign, Santos gave his first interview on Thursday in a New York park. There he answered the questions of the delegate of the EFE agency with freedom because he had already been dismissed as ambassador. He contradicted point by point not only previous statements by Yolanda Díaz and the Sumar program, but also justified the change of position of President Pedro Sánchez on Western Sahara.
The interview, which hardly had an echo in the press, circulated on Friday among the Sumar militancy, where it caused great discomfort, and even the anger of number three on the list for Madrid, Tesh Sidi, 29, of Spanish origin. Saharawi, born in one of the Tindouf refugee camps (southwestern Algeria). “We have to start calling things by their name, Morocco is a dictatorship and is the occupying force of Western Sahara,” Sidi told El Confidencial in response to the words of the congressional candidate who precedes him on the list..
Santos hinted that “it is not realistic” to want to hold a self-determination referendum in Western Sahara when the voter census, prepared by the Spanish colonial administration in 1974, bears, after so many years, almost no relation to the current demographic reality.
The declarations of Yolanda Díaz and the provisional program of Sumar are committed to reaching in the Sahara “a fair, realistic and agreed solution between the parties that allows the right to self-determination of the Saharawi people”. This right can only be exercised through a referendum for which a voter census is required. “The excuse of the census is the one that Morocco – the occupying force – has been using from minute one,” Tesh Sidi replies.. “The truth is that a census has already been drawn up, that it is deposited in Geneva, and that it would only require an update,” he says..
MINURSO, the United Nations contingent deployed in the former Spanish colony, finished updating the Spanish census in 1999. It identified 84,251 voters, but Morocco placed such obstacles that the referendum it agreed to with the Polisario Front, after reaching a ceasefire in 1991, was not held. Technically, it would be possible to update the list of voters drawn up 25 years ago, removing the deceased and adding their descendants..
Agustín Santos refuses to describe Morocco as a “dictatorship” and affirms that the human rights violations that occur there are “individual cases”. Today there are three influential journalists imprisoned in Morocco, as well as a well-known human rights activist and several YouTubers and bloggers.. The Saharawi prisoners of conscience are 39. Between May 2017 and June 2018, the most intense phase of the repression of the Rif revolt, 798 Rif residents, 158 of them minors, went through Moroccan prisons, most of them for only a few months.. The four main leaders of that protest, starting with its leader, Nasser Zefzafi, are still behind bars.. When Mohamed VI acceded to the throne in 1999, no journalist was in prison.
One of the Sahrawis imprisoned by the Moroccan authorities is Mohamed Tahlil, a relative of Tesh Sidi. He entered prison in 2010 and three years later was sentenced to 20 years for his role in the Gdaym Izik revolt, a protest camp that was erected nearby in El Ayoun in the fall of 2010.. In its dismantling, 11 Moroccan riot police died.
The former ambassador of Spain to the UN maintains that the turn of President Pedro Sánchez on the Sahara, supporting the solution advocated by Morocco to resolve the conflict, “is not such because the UN continues to be placed at the center of any eventual solution”.. In the letter that Sánchez sent, on March 14, 2022, to the King of Morocco, he supports Rabat's autonomy plan for the Sahara, a solution that circumvents the self-determination referendum. Although it has been sweetening its resolutions on the Sahara, the UN Security Council reiterated again in the last one, at the end of October, that the objective of an agreement between the parties is “the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara”..
Agustín Santos does not think, according to EFE, that “it is correct to expect some kind of counterpart from Morocco” to Spain's change of position. To date, it has not obtained any, except, from April 2022 to May 2023, a decrease in irregular immigration, especially that which arrives in the Canary Islands. “This change in position has not brought benefits to Spain,” stresses Tesh Sidi.
Aligning with Morocco in the Sahara dispute was an important concession because Spain is the former colonial power and its change in position could have a drag effect. By ceasing to be equidistant, it has also paid a high price with Algeria, which stopped importing Spanish merchandise.
Santos's opinion is not shared by many diplomats, retired or active, and a good part of the academics or researchers who follow foreign policy. “I do not understand what this government has done by changing our position on the Sahara,” said, for example, on June 21 in Barcelona, Jorge Dezcallar, who was ambassador in Rabat (1997-2001).. “I don't see what advantages we have obtained (…), I think it is a very serious mistake,” he concluded.
Israel is the last point of disagreement between Agustín Santos and Tesh Sidi, which reflects the majority opinion in Sumar. The former ambassador is reluctant to describe the treatment given by Israel to the Palestinians as apartheid. This term, used to describe the racial segregation that prevailed in South Africa, is the one used by large human rights NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.. “Of course it's apartheid,” replies the activist of Saharawi origin. It is no coincidence, he stresses, that “two occupying powers, such as Morocco and Israel, have openly established a close relationship of military and security cooperation.”.
The language used by Agustín Santos is reminiscent, to a certain extent, of that of his former boss, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, today High Representative for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations.. Although he was not part of the Spanish Government, Moratinos' good relations with the Moroccan authorities made him, at the beginning of 2022, one of the architects of the Spanish-Moroccan reconciliation, whose first step was sending the letter to Mohamed VI.
Tesh Sidi tries to downplay this trajectory. “It doesn't bother me to be part of the same list as him,” he says. “I'm looking forward to seeing how it's pronounced from now on,” she concludes..