Demonstrations in Europe denounce Algerian interference in Moroccan affairs

Moroccan expatriates denounced last weekend in Northern Germany and Belgium the Algerian interference in Morocco's domestic affairs and called for the release of Moroccans detained in Southern Algeria.

Flooding in hundreds from the North region of Germany, the demonstrators showed an all-out support to the Moroccanity of the Sahara and denounced Algeria's rhetoric regarding this issue.

Such acts "mar bilateral relations, undermine the UMA (Maghreb Arab Union mustering Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia), and harm the whole Arab nation," pointed out a demonstrator from Bremen.

Algeria has been backing the separatist movement of the "Polisario" which claims, since 1976, the separation of Morocco's southern provinces (the Sahara) from the rest of the Kingdom. Morocco had retrieved this former Spanish colony in 1975 under the Madrid Accords.

The demonstration also condemned the detention, for three decades now, of hundreds of Moroccans in Tindouf camps (southwestern Algeria), in contempt of international calls for their immediate and unconditional release.

Demonstrators tried to extend a protestation and denunciation letter to Algerian embassy officials in Berlin, who refused to take it.

It is the fourth demonstration held this month in Germany in support of Morocco in the Sahara conflict, after that of Bonn, DŸsseldorf and Offenbach.

In Belgium, hundreds of Moroccans staged a similar demo in front of the Algerian embassy in Brussels.

At the end of the demo, a collective of Moroccan associations in Belgium extended a letter to the Algerian ambassador in Brussels wherein they called on the Algerian authorities to put an end to their interference in Morocco's domestic affairs and called for the immediate release of Moroccans detained in the Algerian territory.