Geneva, 5 March 2022 (SPS) - Morocco is manipulating the international public opinion, distorting the reality about its military occupation of Western Sahara and building a "lie industry," Algeria's permanent representative at the United Nations in Geneva Lazhar Soualem has said.
Exercising its right to reply following Morocco's minister of Justice who had devoted "the third of his address to attacking Algeria," during the high-level segment of the 49th session of Human Rights Council, the Algerian delegation through its head, Lazhar Soualem, denounced Thursday the Kingdom's practices and the media blackout imposed to silence the events taking place in the country, while for weeks, "protestors have been occupying the public space in 50 Moroccan cities to denounce plunder, predation and social injustice (...) and to demand change."
The Algerian diplomat said "the allegedly constitutional Kingdom fakes its performance (in various fields), including in terms of human rights."
"It distorts the situation brought about by the military occupation of a territory (Western Sahara) it does not own (...), manipulates the international public opinion, violently suppresses its opponents, including through its digital police, and spies on its own allies."
Morocco has "built and mounted" an "industry of lies backed by a rating machine to ensure the complacency of its protectors, and promote, as has been the case for the past four decades, the inaction of UN deliberative and sanctioning bodies," Soualem said.
Such practices are motivated by Algeria's "commitment to international legality" and "solidarity with a people who refuses the fait accompli of the occupation."
Algeria has been demanding for more than four decades the organization of a referendum on self-determination for the people of the (Western Sahara) territory, considered as a non-autonomous territory and a decolonization issue at the United Nations," the Algerian ambassador said.
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