Western Sahara News

[The following open letter was written by Moroccan journalist Hamza Mahfoud on 11 November 2014, in response to King Mohammed VI's speech marking the anniversary of the Green March. The open letter was originally published in Arabic on Huna Sotak and translated to English by Abdellah Laaraj. Since its publication, the open letter has been widely disseminated on social media, drawing a wide range of responses.] Dear King, I am writing regarding the Sahara after having watched your speech last Thursday. I would like to present the point of view of a Moroccan citizen who wished he were in a stronger position to defend his country. The reality is that he found himself split between the overwhelming desire to do so and the simultaneous constraints. How can anyone possibly defend his nation when it is ruled by authoritarianism, governed by a regime that fails to respect basic human rights, and is dedicated to perpetuating systematic favoritism and internal, pervasive corruption

Caitlin Dearing Scott is Senior Vice President of Research, Projects, and Programs at the Moroccan American Center where she provides overall supervision and coordination of research for the Center, with a focus on political and security issues pertinent to Morocco, Moroccan-American relations, and North Africa. Fluent in French, Caitlin holds an MA in International Affairs from the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs and a BA in History and International Studies from the College of New Jersey. I have closely followed Caitlin Dearing Scott (I will refer to her as “Dearing” for short) since she got out of college in 2008 and started working for the Moroccan American Center (MAC), a long-time paid lobbyist and foreign agent for Morocco. I admit to always being astounded by the disjoint between her impressive educational background - with specializations in international affairs, human rights, conflict resolution, genocide in Rwanda, and North

Since early October, Chris Coleman, an anonymous profile, and the Moroccan authorities play cat and mouse in social networks. The first hanging, especially in Dropbox, a free online storage service, confidential documents and emails that advertise through Twitter; the seconds request that these files get deleted and have even managed to close the account from which they much incordian. He opens another. Whoever is hidden behind Chris Coleman is not a pro-style Julian Assange and Wikileaks team. It's probably a hacker, with sympathy for the Saharawi independence movement, judging by some of the profiles that he follows on Twitter. If he was more adept and had more resources would have opened a website on a remote server on which he could hang the stolen material. The "papers" released by Chris Coleman expose the work of Morocco's foreign intelligence service, the Directorate General for Research and Documentation (DGED) led by Yassin Mansouri, to get think t

Rabat October 29, 2014. Subject: 2nd World Forum on Human Rights in Marrakech from 27 to 30 November 2014. Dear friends, I'm in Rabat to visit as I do every 3 months Naama Asfari, his companions and all Saharawi detainees who are in Sale1 prison. Prisoners of Gdeim Izik have charged me to inform you of their decision to conduct several hunger strikes in November and December in connection with activists from the Occupied Territories: * From 6 to 8 November 2014 for the anniversary of the launch of the "Green March" and the 4th anniversary of the fall of Gdeim Izik and incarceration. * From 25 to 29 November 2014 at the World Forum on Human Rights in Marrakech * On 9 and 10 December 2014 for the International Day of Human Rights. Naama Asfari and his Gdeim Izik group decided to take advantage of the visibility of this Global Forum to be invited symbolically in Marrakech ! By making a hunger strike during the period of this forum. They need us

During the 3rd University Conferences on Sahrawi Culture held in Murcia, Spain, Mr. Gaici Nah, member of the coordinating team of the International Campaign against the Wall of the Moroccan Occupation in Western Sahara, gave a talk at the University of Murcia on 28 October entitled “the Wall: the Moroccan version of Apartheid.” The speaker explained the stages of the construction of the wall that Morocco built in the eighties to counter the Sahrawi army, which is 2700 km long. The wall, which is the second longest wall in the world after the Great Wall of China, continues to divide the Sahrawi people and their Territory. According to the speaker, the Moroccan regime “cloned” the idea of the wall based on other experiences, which were doomed to failure. He also explained that, both in the refugee camps and the occupied territories and the liberated territories, Sahrawis live traumatised by the persistence of the wall, because in addition to killing and injuring innocent peopl

During his working visit to Washington, a year ago, King Mohammed VI of Morocco took a triple discreet engagement with his host, President Barack Obama, on the Western Sahara. The official joint statement did not include it. The agreement was brought to light thanks to Chris Coleman, an anonymous Twitter profile that leaked four weeks ago tens of Moroccan diplomacy confidential documents. The agreement is defined by a cable that the Deputy Ambassador of Morocco to the UN Abderrazzak Laassel, sent on August 1st to his minister debriefing him on the conversation with his US counterpart Rosemary Di Carlo. A year later, in April 2013, the Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, tried to change the resolution that the Security Council votes every year in April on the Sahara to extend the mandate of the MINURSO, the UN blue helmets contingent deployed in the former Spanish colony. Rice has proposed to expand its remit to be charged with human rights, but Rabat, supported by several Euro

We study the economic interests -oil, phosphate and fishing- in Western Sahara. We analyze the use of resources during the Spanish colony and how was transferred to Morocco. The exploitation of natural resource in Non-Self Governing Territories has important limitations imposed by international law. Finally, we study the impact of these economic activities, with its peculiarities, for the Spanish interests. Author: Violeta Trasosmontes  THIS DOCUMENT IS ONLY AVAILABLE IN SPANISH LANGUAGE http://www.ieee.es/en/Galerias/fichero/docs_marco/2014/DIEEEM17-2014_Canarias-Sahara_VioletaTrasosmontes.pdf