A day after the Peruvian Foreign Ministry unexpectedly announced the severing of relations with SADR in Western Sahara, the party of Peruvian President Pedro Castillo, Nuevo Peru is demanding the move be reversed.
On Thursday, Peru’s Foreign Ministry announced it was ending the country’s recognition of SADR and putting its diplomatic weight behind Morocco’s proposed alternative to independence: regional autonomy for Western Sahara inside of the Moroccan state.
According to the ministry, the decision was made “because there is no effective bilateral relationship to date,” claiming the move was “in accordance with international law and the UN resolutions on the Sahara issue.”
Lima had reestablished relations with SADR less than a year earlier, signed joint agreements, and Peru’s envoy urged the UN’s Fourth Committee to open “a process that leads to a final and peaceful solution, which ensures the decolonization of Western Sahara."
‘Validating the Suppression of the Saharawi People’
In a Friday statement, Castillo’s party, Nuevo Peru, “roundly rejected” his government’s decision and rebutted its claims.
The party said the move showed “little respect for international law and the principle of the free determination of the people, [or] conforming with the principle of equal jurisdiction of states." Peru has long had links with the Saharawi people, both having also been Spanish colonies and Spanish-speaking countries. In actuality, SADR maintains relations with 84 countries, with Colombia being the most recent to be added in recent weeks, one of the first decisions of President Gustavo Petro.
“With this measure, [the Peruvian state] un-recognizes the existence of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic. The territory of SADR has been occupied illegally by Morocco since 1976, when Spain withdrew. Since then, said territory is considered by the international community and the United Nations as a territory pending decolonization. To recognize the occupation of [Western] Sahara as part of Morocco is to validate the suppression of the Saharawi people to a dictatorship which is constantly violent toward human rights, lacks the separation of powers or elections, and [where] power is totally concentrated in an absolute monarchy in the 21st century. We express our solidarity with the Saharawi people and their tireless struggle for sovereignty.”
Right-Wing Foreign Minister Goes Rogue
According to Nuevo Peru, the change is the singular doing of Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Rodriguez Mackay, “a known fraudster and right-wing ideologue” who was appointed to the ministry on August 5.
“His appointment has provoked the renunciation of well-known diplomats who previously provided important services to the country,” Nuevo Peru said, noting that “Rodriguez Mackay is unaware of the previous orientations of Peruvian foreign policy,” citing his recently voiced opposition to ratifying the Escazu Agreement.
Indeed, before his appointment earlier this month, Rodriguez Mackay was a fierce critic of Castillo, whose government he called "communist" and who he called a dictator, warning he was going the way of Chavismo.
“For a democratic foreign policy and the plain respect for international law, we demand from President Pedro Castillo, as the chief of Peruvian foreign policy, honor the compromise that made the reestablishment of relations with the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic and fire Rodriguez Mackay,” Nuevo Peru said.
Earlier, Vladimir Cerron, a member of the Peru Libre party, issued a statement calling for Mackay to resign "for contributing to the genocide in Western Sahara and siding with the oppressor Morocco."
Castillo, a schoolteacher and farmer from the country’s mountainous interior, has faced fierce opposition from the country’s right-wing, which had been in power for more than three decades, since even before he won the 2021 elections. His government has been in constant crisis over the last year, leading to frequent turnover of ministerial positions and several impeachment attempts against him.
US’ 2020 Reversal Prompts Others
Western Sahara has lost several key friends in recent years, the most important of whom was Spain, which struck a deal with Morocco in March for tighter control of the borders around the Spanish exclaves of Melilla and Ceuta. The Polisario Front was recognized by the UN in 1991 as the legitimate representatives of the Saharawi people, when the UN established its MINURSO mission to oversee an independence referendum there that has never materialized.
Polisario fought Spanish, then Moroccan occupation from the 1970s until 1991, when the ceasefire was reached and MINURSO was formed. However, that ceasefire collapsed in November 2020 when Morocco attacked a protest camp by Saharawi civilians at a border crossing into Mauritania, which Saharawis say is being used to steal the country’s resources. A month later, the US abandoned its support for the UN independence referendum and backed Morocco’s autonomy scheme as part of a deal for Morocco to normalize relations with Israel.