A letter from the Moroccan Government addressed to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva dated September 9, assures Melilla and Ceuta enclaves are occupied territories.
“Morocco has no land borders with Spain,” said the letter, which was a response to the Commissioner’s request for information regarding the circumstances surrounding the recent tragic stampede at the Melilla fence.
“Melilla remains an occupied presidium. That is why we cannot mention borders, but only crossing points,” reports Spanish daily El Espanol.
Melilla and Ceuta are referred to as “occupied cities” throughout the 11 pages of the Moroccan response to the commission’s requests, reports the same source.
The Spanish Popular Party’s spokeswoman, Cuca Gamarra, requested President Pedro Sanchez to respond to the letter in Parliament.
“Ceuta and Melilla are Spanish, period,” he said, responding to Gamarra urging him to take advantage of the parliamentary session to affirm that Rabat’s claim is false, and “not to leave without defending Spain’s territorial integrity and its sovereignty.”
Prior to the recently published letter, Sanchez has spoken of “the Spanishness of Ceuta and Melilla” in Rabat on April 7, following his meeting with King Mohammed VI.
“The national sovereignty of Spain on its territory is not in doubt, including Ceuta and Melilla,” he said in a press briefing from the Moroccan capital.
A message that he reiterated on many occasions, including during his appearance last June before the plenary of the lower house of Parliament.
Although Morocco has long-maintained that both cities are, in its view, occupied territories, and Spain doubling down on the Spanishness of the enclaves, relations and the passage of both goods and people continues smoothly.
Back in September, the Foreign Ministers of both countries announced the complete normalisation of the “transit of goods and people by land.”
The opening is scheduled for January 2023, after the neighbors hold their highly anticipated and long delayed high-level meeting, planned for the end of November 2022.
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