The "Arab Spring" sends us a very clear message: the people must speak! Across North Africa and the Middle East, people are crying out for a free choice over their future.
But there is one place where this desperate cry is being silenced. The territory of Western Sahara, the last colony in Africa, has been under Moroccan occupation since 1975. Today, the Saharawi people face repression, violence and imprisonment if they dare to demand their rights. This includes their fundamental right to decide the future of their country. This right has been endorsed repeatedly by the UN Security Council, and therefore by extension the United States.
There have been demonstrations and protests in the territory since last November, but they go virtually unreported because the Moroccan government prevents all foreign media from visiting Western Sahara. The UN peacekeeping mission there is also unable to act. Due to France's support for Morocco in the UN Security Council, this mission has no mandate to monitor the human rights situation.
No country in the world recognizes Morocco's occupation of the Western Sahara, and yet it is allowed to continue. I am visiting the United Nations today to ask that it:
1. Finally allow the people of the Western Sahara to vote freely on their future, as legally guaranteed by the UN-backed Settlement Plan.
2. Mandate its peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara to monitor and protect the basic human rights of the Saharawi people. It is extraordinary that this is the only UN peacekeeping mission established since 1978 which is not mandated to monitor human rights.
The UN has promised self-determination to the people of Western Sahara since 1991, when the Settlement Plan between Morocco and the POLISARIO Front, which represents the Saharawi people, was endorsed by the UN Security Council. The plan called for a referendum to be held within 6 months to decide whether Western Sahara should be independent or part of Morocco.
That referendum never happened. Despite agreeing to it, Morocco today refuses even to contemplate a referendum with independence as an option. There have been decades of UN negotiations and a mountain of resolutions, but the sad reality is that the world has done nothing to implement what everyone signed up to -- a free and fair vote of the people.
Instead of trying to use its privileged partnership with Morocco to influence progress on Western Sahara, the European Union chooses to ignore the dispute and focus on commercial opportunities. For example, the EU pays Morocco to allow its fishing vessels to exploit Western Sahara's rich waters, contravening accepted international law. My own country has some soul-searching to do: as the former colonial power in Western Sahara, Spain should be leading the charge within the EU to seek a resolution. Instead, Spain chooses to protect its fishing fleet's access to Western Sahara's waters.
As Morocco seeks to delay UN-sponsored talks and change the facts on the ground by settling the territory, 150,000 Saharawi refugees languish in refugee camps in the Sahara desert, where they fled following the 1975 invasion. I have visited those camps. The dignity and courage of the refugees cannot conceal the desperate suffering they endure, and the hopelessness of a people whose liberation has been promised by the international community but never delivered.
This situation is appalling. But there is an opportunity to change it. A thoughtful and skilled former US diplomat, Christopher Ross, has been working to forge an agreement between Morocco and the POLISARIO Front. The US and the United Nations need to tell Morocco that now is the time to allow the people of the Western Sahara to decide their future. Morocco cannot endlessly delay this process, or offer a fig-leaf "autonomy" to the territory that falls far short of the legal requirement for a vote on independence.
In his visionary May 19th speech about the future of the Middle East, President Obama mentioned self-determination many times: people must be allowed to decide their own future. This is all that the people of the Western Sahara ask for. It has been promised to them but continually denied. After 36 years, the UN Security Council has the power to change this terrible injustice. Let the people speak.
This impasse has also fueled instability across North Africa and hindered much-needed security cooperation to counter regional terrorist threats.
Key international and regional leaders support a compromise solution granting autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty for the Sahrawis. This plan, endorsed as “serious and credible†by the UN Security Council, is the only “realistic†solution according to the US Congress and three successive Administrations.
Arab Spring reforms must indeed include the Western Sahara, and its voters enthusiastically supported Morocco’s new Constitution. With democratic changes in Libya, Tunisia, and across the region, the opportunity is real for international pressure to resolve this conflict and promote regional economic and security cooperation.
Increased attention to the Sahrawis’ plight can help put an end to their suffering, if world leaders will broker a compromise solution to a conflict the world can no longer afford to ignore.
Edward M. Gabriel, former US Ambassador to Morocco, is a registered agent of the Kingdom of Morocco. For more information, please visit the Department of Justice in Washington, DC.
Noam Chomsky "In fact, the current wave of protests actually began last November in Western Sahara, which is under Moroccan rule after a brutal invasion and occupationÂ. The Moroccan forces came in, carried out—destroÂyed tent cities, a lot of killed and wounded and so on. And then it spread."
Already, at least, 25 people have been killed.
In 1975, after Morocco's invasion of Western Sahara and Indonesia'Âs invasion of East Timor, the Security Council passed a series of resolutionÂs demanding immediate withdrawalÂ. Moroccan forces still occupy Western Sahara.
The Royal Advisory Council for Human Rights (CCDH) of Morocco in a unique report confirms the killing of 352 "disappearÂed" Saharawis from 1958 to 1992. Out of these, over 200 died in military bases and secret detention centres, including children.
Some 13 people were executed by a martial court in 1976.
Really? Some facts for you: The people of Western Sahara are in bed with al Qaeda, drug trafficking, Qaddafi supporting. The area you are talking about is huge and the people of that region are between 200 and 300 thousand. Do you still think they can take on Al Qaeda?
Just for the sake of a cause, these actors cannot go around manipulating folks. Western sahara is not occupied, just like when Rick Perry mentioned breaking from the union, some people have brought the same thing up in western Sahara. These people have been supported by the likes of Qaddafi, Castro, Hugo Chavez, etc... Not because they have a legitimate claim but because they have similar ideologies. Socialist/communist ideology. Go check out how many countries support Polisario and who they are. They are mostly the likes of Cuba and North Korea.
Also, I like the logic of your second paragraph: Western Sahara is not occupied(also: water is not wet) because it's generally parties on the Left(ie, parties which at least claim to care about justice, national determination and anti-imperialism) that support the Polisario Front. Good argument.
However, he overstates the case when he says: "But there is one place where this desperate cry is being silenced. The territory of Western Sahara . . . ."
President Obama has been doing his best to silence the Palestinians bid for statehood, before his speech to the UN General Assembly, with his speech, and afterwards.
The US Congress has moved to cut off aid to the Palestinians, to punish them for having dared to stand up to Israel and the US.
So, the Western Sahara is not the "one place" where voices calling for the right of self determination are being silenced.
So how, precisely, have they been " silenced" by President Obama?
Palestinians have consistently rejected Israeli offers because consistently, Israel has refused to negotiate on any Palestinian demand - borders substantially in agreement with the 1967 border, East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital. Israel has consistently demanded full control of Palestine's water, Palestine's borders, Palestine's airspace and ports. Would the United States agree to such demands if WE were negotiating for our sovereignty?
Mr. Arafat publicly acknowledged Israel's right to exist in 1988, and the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, including Fatah, have continued to acknowledge Israel's right to exist. Will Israel honestly acknowledge Palestine's right to exist, essentially within the 1967 borders?
It is sad that any potential human rights violations are being condoned by the EU. That must be really great fish.
Media, ain't it grand
1) Mr Bardem mentioned the agony of the “refugees in the Sahara Desertâ€. That might create some confusion as these refugees are under the Polisario’s control on Algerian soil. Military checkpoints, restriction of movement and dire conditions are enforced by the Polisario and Algeria, not by Morocco. In the meantime, Morocco has a policy of open-door to refugees who make it to the border or to the Moroccan embassy in Mauritania. While Morocco certainly has a historic debt towards the refugees, Morocco has no control over their situation in Algeria that supports the Polisario.
2) To even contemplate comparing the demonstrations in Western Sahara to those giving birth to the Arab Spring doesn’t account for the Moroccan reaction. In the riots of November in Western Sahara, the outcome was 11 dead police officers and 2 dead civilians. How do these numbers reconcile with an image of a brutal Moroccan state?
3) There has been no vote where Sahrawis picked the Polisario as a representative: a movement that confines the movement of refugees with military checkpoints, creates a special prison for women who are pregnant out of wedlock, and refuses to allow the UN to even organize a census to account for Sahrawis living under their control, while, reportedly, selling UN Food and Aid in the black market. If the Polisario stands for democracy and freedom, then how come they have the same leader since the 70s?
4) When speaking of the proposed referendum, Mr Bardem also fails to mention some details. It was Morocco that actually proposed a referendum as a solution to the conflict in the 80s, followed by endless quarrels about who gets to vote. The Polisario wanted to include Southern tribes more sympathetic with their position while Morocco wanted to include Northern tribes who might feel Moroccan. In the meantime, residents of the territory since the 70s who might not be tribe members aren’t even accounted for. Who in the civilized world would allow a referendum where some citizens don’t get to vote? Certainly not Spain that doesn’t allow a referendum in Catalonia that would account for all citizens including non-Catalans.
Mr Bardem, like many Spanish leftists, speaks from a pro-Polisario position. I would reconcile his statements with some facts from the other isle.
It would be nice if all of the posters here who are such supporters of self-determination, at least when it comes to the Palestinians, would care equally about the Saharawis.