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Nikolaj Nielsen 6 August 2009
analysis
A row of Moroccan flags, firmly embedded in a concrete wall too tall to scale, align a compound that has no political will and surround a United Nations mission that has no human rights mandate. Minurso, the UN Mission for the Referendum in the Western Sahara, is a sad spectacle where the single blue flag appears to reach tall into the brisk December sky. But it hangs limp as the dozens of red draped green stars flutter in the slight breeze; defiant and dominant.
In front of the mission's gate are two armed Moroccan soldiers. They stare out onto an empty lot where some brave individuals once staged a peaceful protest. Their demands for the fundamental rights of assembly, of freedom of expression and thought, were quickly kicked into the dirt by the black boots of the Moroccan security forces and their notorious DST. The blue helmets of the mission were passive, behind their barricade sipping sweet minted teas. Their silence underlines the terrible cost of human suffering and injustice that has gone unchecked for over 34 years. As I walk by the compound, one of the soldiers approaches and asks if I work for the mission. He then tells me to leave.
This is Laayoune. A former Spanish outpost turned administrative centre where Moroccan soldiers, police, and security details are as common as the lowly soul attempting to carve out a life in the middle of this vast desert, whose relative size is comparable to that of the entire UK. Laayoune houses some 200,000 (this figure is in dispute) individuals. In its margins, in the Eraki neighbourhood and elsewhere, the Saharawi live in bland block apartments, some in slums, some in relatively decent housing. All under the tyranny of indifference and a media blackout.
Minurso was established in 1991 with a mandate to oversee a referendum for the self-determination of the Sahrawi and to keep the peace between Morocco and the Polisario. But years of deadlock, of missed opportunities, and a lack of political will in the Security Council has forced the blue helmets into a corner where comfort and complacency have replaced international law and rigour.
Boredom erodes the soldiers' minds. Their SUVs are shiny and brilliantly white, the tires a perfect black. Everything they have appears new and when they are parked in the asphalt of lots of expensive hotels like the Nagir, the ordinary Sahrawi woman can do nothing but walk by, her head turned low as the bustle of Africa's longest territorial conflict and the UN's last decolonisation procedure continues unabated, unchecked and discredited. She is alone with her thoughts, but a recurrent phrase - shared by so many just like her - runs through her head like ticker tape: Independence, independence now.
On 28 April, Amnesty International sent a letter to the UN Security Council calling on members to include a human rights monitoring component in Minurso's mandate. Two days later, that request was denied. One can only speculate as to why. Permanent Security Council member France has long been an advocate of Morocco's autonomy plan and their commercial and political interests in the kingdom far outweigh any human rights mandate. French banks Credit Agricole and Société Général dot the city's main boulevards Hassan II and Mohammed V. Then two years ago France blocked the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from publishing the following in a report on the conflict: The right to self-determination for the people of Western Sahara must be ensured and implemented without any further delay. According to Reuters, France did not offer any immediate comment when questioned.
Several hundred kilometres away in the refugee camps in Algeria, Khadad Mhamed, the Polisario member in charge of the referendum with Minurso, fumes. 'The United Nations is morally responsible for this delay. It is a scandal that we are still suffering after all these years. Minurso is unable to organise a referendum because there is no political will.'
Worse, according to some Sahrawi, Minsuro witnessed the physical abuse by the Moroccan police on fellow Sahrawi and did nothing. In January 2008, the UN peacekeepers defaced and vandalised prehistoric art in the occupied territories Agence France Presse reported. Several of the soldiers had sprayed paint onto rock art that depicts human and animal figures dating back 6000 years. And then there are rumours of sexual abuse. But these belong to other articles, and other proper and thorough investigations.
What the Minsuro are doing is providing the logistical support along with the coordinated efforts of the UNHCR: To fly Sahrawi from Laayoune to visit distant relatives in the refugee camps in Algeria. According to the UNCHR, between March 2004 and April of this year, some 8,000 Sahrawi have benefitted from the program which was established under the wing of what is disingenuously called the Confidence Building Measures Programme (CBM).
Christopher Ross, the new UN Secretary General's Personal Envoy for the Western Sahara, is seeking to promote more such measures in order to see a definitive end to the conflict. His predecessor, Peter van Walsum, failed miserably. In August 2008, Mr Walsum wrote an op-ed in El Pais where he advanced a solution 'short of full independence'. It was an astonishing admission that flew in the face of dozens of UN resolutions, including Resolution 1514 that guarantees a people's right to self-determination. The resolution is a pillar in the UN Charter and no person has the right to determine a people's destiny except the people. So much for neutrality, though some are now voicing hope in Mr Ross and a US administration headed by President Barack Obama.
'Mr Ross is an exceptional figure, he speaks fluent Arabic and understands the conflict,' says Pedro Pinto Leite, secretary of the International Platform of Jurists for East Timor (IPJET). The IPJET, instrumental in shaping the referendum for self-determination in East Timor, has for years also supported the Saharawi. Mr Leite then said Obama had sent a letter to King Mohammed VI expressing his views on the conflict, though no record or publication has yet brought this into the public domain.
Not only the UN, but also the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in favour of the Sahrawi - over thirty years ago. But where international justice continues to fail the oppressed, the fight continues in Laayoune's alleys and streets, where the idea of independence from Rabat is rooted in the lives of the 160,000 refugees, as well as families torn apart. The walls on these neighbourhoods are tagged 'Morocco, Morocco out!' along with other slogans, written in Spanish and in Arabic. Driving through the neighbourhood one late evening to meet the activists, I spotted four terrified young boys lined up against the wall as Moroccan police yelled in their faces. A wall near them was also tagged but the cab driver casually said it was drugs.
For Brahim Sabbar, a Saharawi human rights defender who lives in Laayoune, the struggle for independence is one that can only be won through peaceful protest and through the recourse of international law. 'Our relationship with the Moroccan civilian is good, it's the state we have a problem with,' he says.
Mr Sabbar is probably now in his late fifties or early sixties, but he spent at least ten years of his life locked up in the secret detention Kaalat Megouna. His family thought he was dead, his mother had refused to talk and remained silent until finally one day he arrived at her doorstep, frail but alive. His story is one that continues under remarkably similar parallels by those much, much younger than him. He had been apprehended by plainclothes policemen near Dakhla, a port town off the coast of the Western Sahara, where he had been celebrating Mauritania's defeat and withdrawal from the territory. For the first four years, he and eight other Sahrawi were isolated from the rest of the prison population.
'We kept ourselves entertained by creating theatre as a vehicle. We became both audience and actor.' As the years went by, the Saharawi at Kaalat formed committees until finally there emerged the start of a human rights organisation. Today, the Sahrawi Association of Victims of Grave Human Rights Violations Committed by the Moroccan State (ASVDH) remains banned but the material it produces and the testimonies it supplies to other organisations like Frontline Defenders and Human Rights Watch is a demonstration of its commitment.
analysis
A row of Moroccan flags, firmly embedded in a concrete wall too tall to scale, align a compound that has no political will and surround a United Nations mission that has no human rights mandate. Minurso, the UN Mission for the Referendum in the Western Sahara, is a sad spectacle where the single blue flag appears to reach tall into the brisk December sky. But it hangs limp as the dozens of red draped green stars flutter in the slight breeze; defiant and dominant.
In front of the mission's gate are two armed Moroccan soldiers. They stare out onto an empty lot where some brave individuals once staged a peaceful protest. Their demands for the fundamental rights of assembly, of freedom of expression and thought, were quickly kicked into the dirt by the black boots of the Moroccan security forces and their notorious DST. The blue helmets of the mission were passive, behind their barricade sipping sweet minted teas. Their silence underlines the terrible cost of human suffering and injustice that has gone unchecked for over 34 years. As I walk by the compound, one of the soldiers approaches and asks if I work for the mission. He then tells me to leave.
This is Laayoune. A former Spanish outpost turned administrative centre where Moroccan soldiers, police, and security details are as common as the lowly soul attempting to carve out a life in the middle of this vast desert, whose relative size is comparable to that of the entire UK. Laayoune houses some 200,000 (this figure is in dispute) individuals. In its margins, in the Eraki neighbourhood and elsewhere, the Saharawi live in bland block apartments, some in slums, some in relatively decent housing. All under the tyranny of indifference and a media blackout.
Minurso was established in 1991 with a mandate to oversee a referendum for the self-determination of the Sahrawi and to keep the peace between Morocco and the Polisario. But years of deadlock, of missed opportunities, and a lack of political will in the Security Council has forced the blue helmets into a corner where comfort and complacency have replaced international law and rigour.
Boredom erodes the soldiers' minds. Their SUVs are shiny and brilliantly white, the tires a perfect black. Everything they have appears new and when they are parked in the asphalt of lots of expensive hotels like the Nagir, the ordinary Sahrawi woman can do nothing but walk by, her head turned low as the bustle of Africa's longest territorial conflict and the UN's last decolonisation procedure continues unabated, unchecked and discredited. She is alone with her thoughts, but a recurrent phrase - shared by so many just like her - runs through her head like ticker tape: Independence, independence now.
On 28 April, Amnesty International sent a letter to the UN Security Council calling on members to include a human rights monitoring component in Minurso's mandate. Two days later, that request was denied. One can only speculate as to why. Permanent Security Council member France has long been an advocate of Morocco's autonomy plan and their commercial and political interests in the kingdom far outweigh any human rights mandate. French banks Credit Agricole and Société Général dot the city's main boulevards Hassan II and Mohammed V. Then two years ago France blocked the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from publishing the following in a report on the conflict: The right to self-determination for the people of Western Sahara must be ensured and implemented without any further delay. According to Reuters, France did not offer any immediate comment when questioned.
Several hundred kilometres away in the refugee camps in Algeria, Khadad Mhamed, the Polisario member in charge of the referendum with Minurso, fumes. 'The United Nations is morally responsible for this delay. It is a scandal that we are still suffering after all these years. Minurso is unable to organise a referendum because there is no political will.'
Worse, according to some Sahrawi, Minsuro witnessed the physical abuse by the Moroccan police on fellow Sahrawi and did nothing. In January 2008, the UN peacekeepers defaced and vandalised prehistoric art in the occupied territories Agence France Presse reported. Several of the soldiers had sprayed paint onto rock art that depicts human and animal figures dating back 6000 years. And then there are rumours of sexual abuse. But these belong to other articles, and other proper and thorough investigations.
What the Minsuro are doing is providing the logistical support along with the coordinated efforts of the UNHCR: To fly Sahrawi from Laayoune to visit distant relatives in the refugee camps in Algeria. According to the UNCHR, between March 2004 and April of this year, some 8,000 Sahrawi have benefitted from the program which was established under the wing of what is disingenuously called the Confidence Building Measures Programme (CBM).
Christopher Ross, the new UN Secretary General's Personal Envoy for the Western Sahara, is seeking to promote more such measures in order to see a definitive end to the conflict. His predecessor, Peter van Walsum, failed miserably. In August 2008, Mr Walsum wrote an op-ed in El Pais where he advanced a solution 'short of full independence'. It was an astonishing admission that flew in the face of dozens of UN resolutions, including Resolution 1514 that guarantees a people's right to self-determination. The resolution is a pillar in the UN Charter and no person has the right to determine a people's destiny except the people. So much for neutrality, though some are now voicing hope in Mr Ross and a US administration headed by President Barack Obama.
'Mr Ross is an exceptional figure, he speaks fluent Arabic and understands the conflict,' says Pedro Pinto Leite, secretary of the International Platform of Jurists for East Timor (IPJET). The IPJET, instrumental in shaping the referendum for self-determination in East Timor, has for years also supported the Saharawi. Mr Leite then said Obama had sent a letter to King Mohammed VI expressing his views on the conflict, though no record or publication has yet brought this into the public domain.
Not only the UN, but also the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in favour of the Sahrawi - over thirty years ago. But where international justice continues to fail the oppressed, the fight continues in Laayoune's alleys and streets, where the idea of independence from Rabat is rooted in the lives of the 160,000 refugees, as well as families torn apart. The walls on these neighbourhoods are tagged 'Morocco, Morocco out!' along with other slogans, written in Spanish and in Arabic. Driving through the neighbourhood one late evening to meet the activists, I spotted four terrified young boys lined up against the wall as Moroccan police yelled in their faces. A wall near them was also tagged but the cab driver casually said it was drugs.
For Brahim Sabbar, a Saharawi human rights defender who lives in Laayoune, the struggle for independence is one that can only be won through peaceful protest and through the recourse of international law. 'Our relationship with the Moroccan civilian is good, it's the state we have a problem with,' he says.
Mr Sabbar is probably now in his late fifties or early sixties, but he spent at least ten years of his life locked up in the secret detention Kaalat Megouna. His family thought he was dead, his mother had refused to talk and remained silent until finally one day he arrived at her doorstep, frail but alive. His story is one that continues under remarkably similar parallels by those much, much younger than him. He had been apprehended by plainclothes policemen near Dakhla, a port town off the coast of the Western Sahara, where he had been celebrating Mauritania's defeat and withdrawal from the territory. For the first four years, he and eight other Sahrawi were isolated from the rest of the prison population.
'We kept ourselves entertained by creating theatre as a vehicle. We became both audience and actor.' As the years went by, the Saharawi at Kaalat formed committees until finally there emerged the start of a human rights organisation. Today, the Sahrawi Association of Victims of Grave Human Rights Violations Committed by the Moroccan State (ASVDH) remains banned but the material it produces and the testimonies it supplies to other organisations like Frontline Defenders and Human Rights Watch is a demonstration of its commitment.
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