Ivry-sur-Seine Council Meeting Erupts Over Sahrawi Aid Proposal

Tensions within the municipal council of Ivry-sur-Seine (Val-de-Marne). The elected officials are having trouble agreeing on an exceptional grant from the city. "We provide both political and humanitarian support to the Sahrawi people, whose territory has been occupied by the Kingdom of Morocco since the departure of the colonial authorities in 1976, as evidenced by international law and the UN Security Council. At the municipal council, we were submitting for a vote a grant of 6,000 euros to finance a solidarity project for Sahrawi children in Tindouf, a refugee camp in the desert," explains Philippe Bouyssou (PCF), the mayor of Ivry-sur-Seine.

This project has provoked strong criticism. A demonstration was even organized in front of the town hall of Ivry-sur-Seine. "Supporters of the Moroccan occupying power then tried to put pressure, including within the Municipal Council. The session continued behind closed doors and under police protection," reports the mayor. "I am taken aback by the expressed support for Naama Asfari. It seems to me first of all that in this period of (provisional, perhaps) exit from Covid-19, all our efforts and all our attention must be directed towards the concrete problems of the inhabitants of Ivry and towards those who are the most affected by this crisis," reacted the opposition municipal councilor, Rachida Kaaout (LREM).

The elected official considers such a project inopportune. "Don’t you think that the allocation of these 6,000 euros, which you are asking the people of Ivry to pay, could be used to support the citizens of our city who need it the most?" she continues. For Rachida Kaaout, taking advantage of this request for a grant to cite in the preamble a man whom the mayor of the city of Ivry considers a political prisoner but who has been tried in his country for serious acts, is unacceptable. "Just as much as having named him an honorary citizen of the city of Ivry and boasting about it."

In response, the mayor says he is surprised to find Rachida Kaaout’s intervention, who opposed the financing of this solidarity project, on a site supporting the Moroccan regime. "We knew Mrs. Rachida Kaaout as the spokesperson for the ’start-up nation’ in Ivry. Would she also be the representative of the archaic monarchy of Morocco?" he wonders. "Never will any maneuver of this kind hinder our full and complete support for the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination."