From a New Zealand Film Festival...

...comes this press release:

It has a wall separating the indigenous population from the occupying citizens. But it is not Palestine.

It has significant natural resources that are being sold off to the highest bidder and the profits are not going to the people that need it most. But it is not Iraq.

It is Western Sahara, a country on the coast of North Africa bordering Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania.  When Spain pulled out of it’s colony in 1975 Morocco declared it an unoccupied country and moved in despite the Sahrawis who have been living a nomadic life in the territory for centuries.

30 years later and the Sahrawis are still separated from their homeland and the families who stayed behind during the occupation, forced to live in refugee camps divided by a wall that spans the length of the country.

On Thursday Western Sahara became news because of the announcement that a New Zealand company, Sealord, is involved in the exploitation of resources from this region by importing fish from Moroccan companies operating in this occupied country.

The UN has recognised that resources from a disputed territory may be legitimately taken if the value of the resource is declared, made known and the benefits of these resources goes back to the people of the disputed country.

The Directors of the Human Rights Film Festival would like to invite the shareholders, customers, and Board of Sealord and Ravensdown (phosphate is imported from Western Sahara too), to the film Western Sahara – Africa’s Last Colony, to see for themselves if the profits of phosphate and fish sales are benefiting the Western Sahrawis.

Comments

[Will]

I like stuff like this. Pressuring Morocco financially is one of the best ways to end the occupation.

[the American]

Remember the Australian filmmakers Polisario detained in May? They said Polisario was mad at them because they had uncovered evidence of slavery in Tindouf. At the time certain blogs threw fits at the idea of Polisario holding slaves, but then the story went cold.

source : refugees.org/article.aspx?id=1506
More on Slavery in the Camps
Following up on our earlier report, here is a manumission document dated June 13, 2007 purporting to free a slave (taharir rak’ba) among the refugees in the Polisario’s camps around Tindouf. It is signed by an official representative of the Ministry of Justice and Religious Affairs of the Sahirwiya Democratic Arab Republic, the Polisario’s government-in-exile. Needless to say, slavery is not legal in Algeria and international law categorically forbids it.
Slavery in Tindouf Camps
Will nothing surprise us about warehousing and the human rights violations endemic to forced encampment? What about modern day chattel slavery? That’s what Australian film makers Violeta Ayala and Daniel Fallshaw of United Notions Films found when they went to the Polisario-run camps for Saharwi refugees near Tindouf in Algeria earlier this year.
They had gone initially to film the five-day visits arranged by UNHCR between refugees in the camp and relatives in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara when they noticed some anomalies. Some of the 7,000 or so Saharwi of African descent were denied visitation because their names did not match those of their relatives. Instead, they bore the surnames of Arab Saharwi in the camp. Few wanted to talk about it initially but one refugee who had spent time in Spain broke the ice: they had those surnames because they were the property, the slaves of the other refugees.
NGOs Call to Free Sahrawi Refugees at UNHCR Standing Committee

UNHCR’s Standing Committee (a sub-set of its governing Executive Committee) met in Geneva, March 6-9, 2007. NGOs made consensus statements on a number of issues and raised warehousing and refugee rights in a number of them, including one on the Middle East and North Africa condemning
the continued warehousing of Sahrawi refugees in the camps at Tindouf, Algeria. The Polisario rebel group from Western Sahara, with the complicity of the Algerian government, has kept nearly 100,000 refugees confined to camps in the desert for more than 30 years. A recent visit by UNHCR, the World Food Programme, and European agencies found conditions in the camps to be dire, with children suffering from acute malnutrition and high rates of anaemia among pregnant and lactating women. In early 2006, flooding in the camps left 50,000 of the refugees homeless. We hope that UNHCR can work to provide better protection and assistance for these refugees including freedom for the refugees to leave the camps and work to support themselves if they so choose. Algeria’s generous treatment of some 4,000 Palestinian refugees who enjoy nearly the same rights as Algerians with regard to residence and economic activity, is the model it should follow with respect to the Sahrawi.
source: polisario-thinktwice.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26&Itemid=1
Exclusive pictures in “youtube.com” has come to confirm the suspicions of slavery practices within the camps of Tindouf located in the south-east of Algeria and managed by the Polisario Front, a guerrilla in conflict with Morocco for 33 years. Testimonies emanating from black populations who suffer from slavery come to corroborate several recent revelations of foreign journalists having had access to Tindouf camps in 2007as well as the publication by the newspaper “Canarias 7” of a document entitled “release of a slave” obtained from a Tindouf Court which officialize the releasing of two slaves. The video contains a Polisario Front representative declaration, who affirms, in a strong way, that “slavery does not exist in the camps”; It gives also details on the organization of slavery in the camps and segregation against the black populations in the name of “ancestral cultural” practices.
The Timing of the launching of this video is no pain-killer since Morocco and the Polisario Front must meet this week in Manhasset, suburbs of New York for another round of direct negotiations. These talks are held under the UN supervision and with the participation of neiboring countries, Algeria and Mauritania. For several months now, the Polisario Front is under big pressure because counties familiar with the Sahara case like the United States, France and Spain, have clearly embraced the “autonomy plan” proposed by Morocco to the UN in April 2007. This plan proposes a large autonomy for the Western Sahara instead of a referendum which proved to be unrealizable.

[James Bengorion]

please wake up you are playing the game of the Algerian lobby, morocco historically have the right to recover his territory, stop this big lie.

[Sasukisan]

polisario was considered as a terrorist group bac in the 80s, spain wanted the desert and algeria have her eyes fixed in this desert, to annex it, whol the free world know and support morocco, why?
back in 1777 morocco was the first country who recognize USA as an independent country, and lincoln signed a friendship treaty withe the EMPROR of the Moors (moroccan great son the actua king) and USA knows the truth, so the chief of polisario, is a guy from mid country city Marakech?? please don't tell me that the sahara is not moroccan!!
people with a minimum of colture, talk after getting all the information, not beliveing terrorist, separatist, supported by a country, who support terrorist against Mali, and other countries.

[LEdefendeur Du Pentagrame]

you are so naif! WAKE UP all what polisario do, is just the reflect of algeria, Algeria is behind this, AND AS YOU SAIN IN THE ARTICLE, it's a movie, so we can show the truth we want in a movie SIR! so do you believe the movie GODZILA? not because is simply not truth, so for the movie you are lobbying for

[alle]

...a referendum which proved to be unrealizable.

Yeah, "unrealizable" as in "the Moroccan king backtracked on his written promise to hold it once he realized the UN wouldn't let him stuff the voter rolls with Moroccan settlers".