After Brahim Ghali toured Africa to strengthen the support of some of his allies, the Polisario Front is now targeting European universities to spread its separatist stance. In may, Brahim Ghali and his «Foreign Affairs minister» has been working hard on strengthening diplomatic relations with their historical allies in Africa, visiting South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe. In June, however, the Front is targeting European universities to spread through conferences on the Western Sahara conflict its traditional stance. On Monday, a seminar on «Western Sahara and Morocco's foreign ministry» was hosted by the Paris Descartes University and was chaired by university professor Irene Fernández-Molina. The meeting discussed in particular «the great difficulties Morocco faces by occupying Western Sahara», reports Futuro Sahara, a newspaper close to the Polisario. The seminar was an opportunity to touch on the «Morocco's crisis with the United Nations after calls demanded that the MINURSO monitors the human rights situation in the region». The proposal «rejected by Morocco was supported by international human rights organizations», said the same source. Moderated by Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, a research director at the French Research Institute for Development (IRD) affiliated to University Paris-Descartes, also «[discussed] the future of the Western Sahara decolonization and the challenges linked to negotiations between Morocco and the European Union on the renewal of the fisheries agreement». At the Paris V, the Polisario Front has been able to get the needed support to organize similar meetings where it presented its thesis. Indeed, Sébastien Boulay and Béatrice Lecestre-Rollier signed an «open letter of academics and international researchers to Emmanuel Macron» last April, urging the President to «change the French State's position on Western Sahara». In Norway and Spain On the same day, a second conference on Western Sahara was organized by Erik Hagen, head of the Norwegian Support Committee for Western Sahara and coordinator of the international Observatory for the Protection of Western Sahara at the University of Oslo. The meeting was «marked by the presence of Sahrawi journalist Sidi Sbaâi». It mainly discussed «the human rights situation in the camps (…) as well as Western Sahara natural resources». According to Futuro Sahara, the Sahrawi journalist «spoke to Norwegian students about the situation of Sahrawi students». The meeting was reportedly attended by the Secretary General of the Norwegian Students Union and the president of the Student Parliament at the University of Oslo, concludes the same source. On Tuesday, Miguel Simón Contreras, a retired soldier, gave a lecture on the Spanish presence in Western Sahara. After having recalled the history of the Spanish occupation of Western Sahara, he said that «Israel assisted Morocco in building the wall and dividing the territory to avoid the attack of the Sahrawi People's Liberation Army». The Polisario Front is planning to organize a manifestation in Brussels in front of the European Parliament Thursday, 7th of June, to «denounce the attempt of some European parties to 'violate' international legitimacy and 'bypass the European Court of Justice decision to exclude the waters of Western Sahara from the fisheries agreement concluded between the EU and Morocco'».
