Contribution by:
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North) (Lab): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) on obtaining the debate. I feel a sense of depression, disappointment and anger that in 2006 we are debating whether the position of the Polisario in representing the people of Western Sahara and in demanding a referendum is the correct one. The reason I feel anger and depression is that I first raised this matter in the House more than 20 years ago at 4 o’clock in the morning during one of the many all-night Adjournment debates that we used to have in those days. The debate concerned the situation in Western Sahara. The then Foreign Office Minister told me, as subsequent Ministers have told me, “We accept the UN position. Of course there’ll be a referendum.” We have had those answers year after year after year. The former Member of Parliament for Gloucester, Tess Kingham, raised the issue many times, as have other hon. Members. I hope that the Minister can give us hope that we will be serious and determined about bringing about justice for the people of Western Sahara.
I had the fortune to visit the refugee camps in Algeria and to travel into the small bit of liberated zone of the Western Sahara itself to attend the Polisario congress two years ago. Those camps have been there for 31 years. They are home to 150,000 people, who rely on the UN and aid agencies for food, medicine, education, housing and life itself. Is it right that after all these years—31 years—the rest of the world should simply look away, throw a bit of money at the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, and say, “It’s going to be okay. They’ll survive there somehow”? It is wrong. It is an injustice that has to be dealt with.
The report referred by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the mission to the Western Sahara refugee camps in Tindouf is very interesting and I am astonished that it has not been published. We need to know why, and I look to the Government of the UK to demand, as a loyal and active member of the United Nations, the answer to that. The report outlines the systematic abuse of human rights, unfair trials, illegal imprisonment, and all the horrors that go with that, of the people, who have suffered because of the continued occupation of Western Sahara.
When the referendum was first mooted by MINURSO there were many arguments about how it would be organised and who would be on the electoral roll. Indeed, most of the debate has been about the electoral roll itself. The debates went on and negotiations proceeded. In some ways they were quite successful. There was hope. There was a way forward. However, a number of things have happened since then. One was that when the UN representative, Baker, was asked to go there and investigate on behalf of the Secretary-General, he undertook many negotiations and came up with what was known as the Baker plan. In essence it said that the Western Sahara people should accept the de facto administration of the territories and that at a later stage there should be a referendum on the future of the territory. That would probably include votes for the settlers who were moved there by Morocco in the first place.
I attended the Polisario congress that debated that report and the proposal. It was painful to see how the Polisario had been forced into that corner by the international community with the promise of a degree of peace and a right of return, but with no promise of the immediate independence for Western Sahara that it has long demanded and for which it has long campaigned. It was not even given a promise of its possibility in the near future. Having taken a historic, difficult and painful decision, it was then stabbed in the back by Morocco and the United Nations when progress on the process was simply not made. That is the tragedy and sadness of the situation.
Derek Conway: I think the record will show that the Moroccan Government accepted the Baker plan as a basis for negotiation, but that both Algeria and the Polisario refused to accept it. That is not quite the impression that the hon. Gentleman is giving.
Jeremy Corbyn: I beg to differ. That is simply not the case. I was at the congress. I am well aware of the Polisario position and the difficulty it faced. I understand that the hon. Gentleman has close contacts with the Moroccan Administration, and he must know their position: they want to continue occupying Western Sahara illegally and to deny the Sahrawi people the right to vote independently on their future. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud pointed out, unfortunately Morocco can be said to have been rewarded by the agreement of the fisheries policy that was approved by the EU.
My plea to the Minister is to understand the injustice that has happened to the Sahrawi people; to understand the geopolitics of it—the wealth, in the form of fish in the sea and minerals under the ground; and to understand the plight of the people living in refugee camps for all those years. At the moment there is no fighting. There is the sand wall. There are landmines. There are tanks and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Moroccan troops available to go into the area should fighting break out. There is also tension, I believe, among the Sahrawi people. Young people cannot understand why they should spend their lives in a refugee camp when their home is a few miles away, and they want to return in dignity and peace.
Surely this time it is up to us, as a member of the UN, the Security Council and the Human Rights Council, to ensure that the report is published and sees the light of day; to ensure that there is a permanent UN human rights monitoring mission in the area to observe what is going on; and, above all, to ensure that the Sahrawi people have a right, legally endorsed, under the UN decolonisation process, to vote on their future—on whether they live independently or not in that area. It is the last colony of Africa. Surely it is time to ensure that one more page of history is turned, and that those people have the right to decide on their future and their independence or otherwise.