The Fórum Canario Saharaui rejects the position of the Polisario Front on the recommendations of the Foreign Ministry concerning travel to Tindouf

The Fórum Canario Saharaui rejects outright the statements, bordering on "foolishness and recklessness", of the Polisario Front on the travel recommendations made by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which advised Spanish citizens not to travel to Tindouf because of insecurity. 

The Forum itself also advises against travel to the region of Tindouf because security is not guaranteed in any way.

The official statement of the Fórum Canario Saharaui is reproduced below: 

STATEMENT OF THE FÓRUM CANARIO SAHARAUI  

Regarding the recent information on the Sahara question and related issues, this Fórum Canario Saharaui wishes to state the following: 

From this association we show our astonishment and rejection for the recent manifestations, bordering on senselessness and recklessness, perpetrated by the Polisario Front in relation to the travel recommendations expressed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain, which advised against travel to the region to Spanish citizens, due to the increased activity of terrorist groups in the region, which affect the security in the Tindouf camps. These recommendations were seconded by no less than the United States and the United Kingdom.  

Undoubtedly, these are extemporaneous statements, made out of demagogy, with the sole aim of making media noise. This is not surprising, given the irrelevance in which the Polisario is increasingly mired. Proof of this is that its recent communiqué denouncing these recommendations came more than 20 days after the Ministry published them on its website. This is the only way to explain this delayed begging for notoriety.  

However, it should be noted that this is not the first time that the Ministry has made these recommendations in a justified and well-argued manner. The most notorious was at the end of 2019, with a similar response from the Polisario and its ilk. For this reason, following the Ministry's guidelines, we strongly advise against travelling to the Sahrawi camps in Tindouf, given the permanent instability in that area and other neighbouring areas such as Mali, Mauritania, Niger or Burkina Faso, where the difficult conditions on the ground facilitate the continuous transfer of terrorist elements, due to the permeability of their borders. 

We must also reject the irresponsible attitude of the Polisario Front leaders in criticising and misrepresenting the Spanish Ministry's extreme security recommendation. It is extremely dangerous to look the other way as a matter of strategy or political interest, simply for fear of damaging the image of the camps (the raison d'être and livelihood of the Polisario leaders), putting their personal interest before the necessary precautions to avoid any fatal outcome in the form of a jihadist attack with a real possibility of casualties. An execrable way of proceeding that we denounce here.  

On another matter, and in relation to the recent visit to Morocco by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, we at this Forum welcome the outcome of the meeting, the conclusions of which stated that relations between the two countries are at their best for decades, and where Spain's support for Morocco's serious and realistic proposal to resolve the conflict based on broad autonomy was reaffirmed. In this sense, and as we have done since our foundation, we fully support this position, in which both Spain and more and more countries inside and outside the EU favour a mutually acceptable political solution within the framework of the United Nations Charter and the Security Council resolutions, a solution fully consistent with international legality.  

Finally, as underlined after this meeting, we welcome the efforts of Spain and Morocco to establish cooperation in areas such as irregular migration through pioneering programmes which we hope will soon have the expected results, especially in the Canary Islands, in order to overcome this terrible scourge of human trafficking mafias. This cooperation can be extended to the fight against terrorism, a problem that the Polisario despises and neglects, as we noted at the beginning of this communiqué.