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Morocco invents a farce to justify the assassination of the young saharawi Hamdi Tarfaoui

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After two weeks of his disappearance, the Moroccan authorities set up a farce to clarify the fate of Hamdi Etarfaoui, a young Saharawi of 36 years old. Hamdi Etarfaoui, a civil servant, worked in the Bachouia (under prefecture) of the occupied city of El Aaiún, and has disappeared immediately after a dinner organized under the supervision of the prefecture of El Aaiún; the invited people and among them two Moroccan ministers and the governor of El Aaiún were allegedly poisoned (according to Moroccan official version). Hamdi has spoken at this dinner and has accused the Moroccan ministers of corruption. This meeting has also been filmed by the local television. Since that time the family of Hamdi Tarfaoui sought for their son but all their attempts were in vain. Last Tuesday, May 22, the family organized a sit-in in front of the Bachouia (where Hamdi was working) and demanded that the fate of Hamdi be clarified. In the evening, the electricity was cut in the whole c

Morocco's Short-Sighted Politics

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April of this year marked the 21st anniversary since the UN Security Council accepted responsibility for trying to resolve the Western Sahara conflict through a referendum on self-determination. The referendum has never taken place, nor is it likely to ever happen. Nor, for that matter, is it likely that the conflict will be resolved through the mutually acceptable political solution that the Council has been asking for since April 2004. The Security Council adopted yet another resolution asking the parties, the Kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front, which represents Western Saharans, to demonstrate the political will to work on the implementation of its resolutions, something that they have not done so far and giving them another year to continue with their posturing. And again, the Council failed to squarely address the question of human rights in the territory, other than to include a weak passage in the resolution ’s introduction stressing the “importance” of improving

Western Sahara: Opponents to human rights in Western Sahara attack charity web site

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2012-05-27 Arts and human rights charity, Sandblast has been knocked offline in an internet attack. The charity, founded by West Hampstead resident, Danielle Smith, works with the indigenous people from Western Sahara, the Saharawis, whose identity and culture is threatened by the impact of prolonged refugee life and Morocco's occupation. Sandblast's mission is to empower the Saharawis to tell their own story through the arts. The attack has come two weeks before the launch of its ambitious music empowerment project, Studio-Live, which aims to engage UK-based musicians, producers, technicians, and music industry specialists in building a Saharawi music industry from scratch in the refugee camps in the Algerian desert. bbcnews, 27/05/2012

Western Sahara and Palestine: A Comparative Study of Colonialisms, Occupations, and Nationalisms, by Rana Khoury

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Introduction Occupation and colonization are terms that evoke an era of empires and great powers. Once so common, they were eventually replaced by other terms that entered into the global lexicon after the World Wars, such as self-determination and human rights. Yet for two peoples, occupation and settler colonialism – in Wolfe‟s sense of displacing or replacing locals – are not remnants of a time foregone; they remain the reality of everyday life. 1) The Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara draws considerably less attention than the Israeli occupation of  Palestinian territories. However, as this paper will show, these two cases of colonialism over two Arab peoples have much in common. 2) Although a quarter of a century passed between their inceptions, the occupied peoples bear similar scars left by European colonial mishaps: as the British and Spanish stumbled out of their respective territories, the moment was seized by the Zionists and the Moroccans. To maint

Polisario Ready to Free Kidnapped Aid Workers by Force

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MADRID – The leader of the Polisario government of Western Sahara said on Thursday that the group is ready “to sacrifice the lives of its combatants” to liberate three European aid workers kidnapped seven months ago from a refugee camp in Algeria. The Polisario’s intelligence indicates that Spaniards Ainhoa Fernandez de Rincon and Enric Gonyalons and Italian Rosella Urru “are alive,” Prime Minister Abdelkader Taleb Omar said at a seminar in Madrid. He also said he was confident that negotiations to secure the captives’ release would soon bear fruit. If not, however, the Polisario has “the determination and the will to use all efforts to liberate them safe and sound,” he said. Taleb Omar said the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic – the Polisario’s name for the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara – is working actively with the governments of neighboring countries to resolve the situation. Fernandez de Rincon, Gonyalons and Urru were kidnapped Oct. 23 from a fa