This morning we went over to join a party held in honour of a family visiting from the Occupied Territories. There was a man singing Saharawi nationalist songs about hopes for independence and many women dancing.
The UN organises these family visits, in which the participants are flown over for a week to see their relatives, which would otherwise by impossible due to the Moroccan built “Wall of Shame”, fortified by the largest minefields in the world, that splits liberated Western Sahara from occupied Western Sahara.
The Saharawis see the UN mission to the Western Sahara – MINURSO – as parasitic. They have been in the camps since 1991, with the aim of organising a self-determination referendum for the Saharawis. The landmine cleaning programme which they claim to be their own is actually run by Saharawi organizations collaborating with international anti-landmine NGOs.
In the Occupied Territories, the UN tactic is to turn a blind eye. Saharawi activists always make sure to phone UN officials during their peaceful protests which take place in the square near the UN building, asking them to come down and witness the violent repression carried out by Moroccan police. Yet the UN personnel never turn up, demonstrating a strange lack of concern for an organisation that is supposed to stand for international peace and human rights.
Whilst having tea, Mulayahmed showed me a photo of a Saharawi woman, Sultana Khaya, a peace activist from the Occupied Territories. She lost an eye when she was beaten by Moroccan police after participating in a protest for Saharawi self-determination. A policeman had burnt it with his cigarette and beat her face until it fell out.
The peaceful protest movement in the Occupied Territories is led by women, the most famous activist being Aminattou Haidar, known as the “Saharawi Ghandi”, who spent many years disappeared in the so-called “black prison” of Laayoune, the capital of the Western Sahara. The activists film their protests and Moroccan violence on mobile phones then broadcast them on websites such as YouTube in an attempt to break the information blockade that hides their suffering under a blackout curtain of invisibilization. Photos of their injured bodies also appear on many Saharawi and international solidarity websites.
 |  | Western Sahara: 30 Years is Enough:
For 30 years the Saharawi people of Western Sahara have lived in refugee camps in some of the harshest conditions on earth, while their country remains under occupation by Morocco. |
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