Amazigh Movement Launches “Akal” Call to Confront Laws of Dispossession of Indigenous Peoples’ Lands

Agadir24

The Amazigh movement called on all its members to focus all their struggle, advocacy and political forces on defending the issue of the “Akal” land, following “the state persisted in its policy of seizing Amazigh lands by proposing the project of natural reserves represented by the project of the Western Anti-Atlas Natural Park.”

In a statement, the movement described this project, which has recently caused great controversy, as “the last nail in the coffin of the Amazigh land,” as it will “close a long path of land usurpation and forest ownership that has lasted more than a century, since the French occupation of the country.”

The movement explained in its statement, a copy of which is available to Agadir 24, that “the establishment of natural parks and reserves in accordance with Law 07/22 clearly means the end of the Amazighs’ ownership of their land as indigenous people, and a clear violation of the right to ownership and freedom to dispose of their property.”

The same statement, dated July 6, 2024, considered that “there is no point in defending and fighting for the rights of “Awal” in light of the loss of “Akal”, in the face of the fierce attack and incomprehensible legislative obsession to usurp land ownership.”

The same source added that “following decades of policies of exclusion, marginalization, impoverishment and neglect of the Amazigh, which resulted in mass migration and displacement from the countryside and mountain slopes towards the major cities and their plains, the Atlas was emptied of its indigenous population due to the state’s public policies, drought and constraints of the region and climate.”

According to the same source, these policies were implemented following “preparing the political and social ground by emptying the electoral and representative work of the population of its real meaning, by establishing formal elected councils that lack democratic legitimacy, so that the administration can implement the projects of reserves, parks, economic and mining projects without involving the indigenous population in a suspicious silence.”

Accordingly, the Amazigh cultural, developmental and environmental associations, coordination, networks, dynamics and organizations under the banner of the Amazigh movement announced “their continuation of the struggle once morest the decrees and decrees of colonialism and all state plans aimed at seizing lands,” while “investing in the accumulation of struggle that emerged from the womb of the Amazigh movement, in a rational and objective manner in several regions, including the southeast, especially in Imider, and the land movement through the “Akal Coordination” in Sous, and all the field dynamics and other legal battles in various regions.”

The same organizations and bodies confirmed that they will work to “focus all legitimate political, civil, and legal struggle efforts to confront all land usurpation plans in all regions, in fulfillment and respect for the rights guaranteed by the constitution and international treaties.”

The same source called on the Amazigh organizations with international and UN experience in the field of human rights within the halls of the United Nations, to “work on activating the provisions of the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and to move from advocating for linguistic and cultural rights to struggle and advocacy internally and internationally in order to confront the laws of expropriation of indigenous peoples’ lands.”