e-International Relations, 10 May 2012
By Jacob Mundy
At the end of every April, a small drama plays out in the UN Security Council. This is when the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO, its French acronym) comes up for its annual renewal. Western Sahara — Africa’s last colony according to the United Nations — is largely ignored by the Security Council the other eleven months of the year.
8 May 2012
Malak Amidan, human rights activist visiting Australia during May is calling for an end of phosphate imports from the territory. Malak Amidan fears that when she returns to the occupied zone of Western Sahara she will be jailed by Moroccan authorities for speaking out.
View report on SBS >>
Thursday 17 May - 6.30pm to 8.30pm at Sydney Mechanics School of Arts 280 Pitt St Sydney
$10 entry / Students by donation
Music, Drinks and Nibbles
Organised by Australia Western Sahara Association and Sydney University Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies
Join us for an evening with Saharawi human rights activist, Malak Amidan, as she talks about the situation in Western Sahara, one of the longest and most neglected conflicts of our time.
Malak will expose the systematic political, environmental, social and cultural human rights abuses endured by the people of Western Sahara
Green Left Weekly, Thursday, April 26, 2012
By Ryan Mallett-Outtrim, Adelaide
Sahrawi human rights advocate and trade unionist Malak Amidane will visit Australia this month to share her experience of campaigning for justice in her homeland.
European Parliament resolution of 18 April 2012 on the Annual Report on Human Rights in the World and the European Union’s policy on the matter, including implications for the EU’s strategic human rights policy
“91. Recalls its resolution of 25 November 2010 on the situation in Western Sahara; condemns the ongoing repression of Sahrawi people in the occupied territories and calls for their fundamental rights, including freedom of association, freedom of expression and the right to demonstrate, to be respected; calls for the release of the 80 Sahrawi political prisoners and, as a matter of priority, of the 23 who have been held without trial in Salé prison following the dismantling of the Gdeim Izik camp; reiterates its call for the establishment of an international mechanism to monitor human rights in the Western Sahara and for a fair and lasting settlement of the conflict on the basis of the right to self-determination of the Sahrawi people, in accordance with the relevant United Nations resolutions;”
European Parliament resolution >>
Press Release from the Polisario Front Representation for Europe
Read and view the actions around the world under the MINURSO 2012 banner at http://minurso.tumblr.com
Matthew Russell Lee in New York at Inner City Press is letting out some of the secrets happening behind closed doors in the Department of Peace Keeping Operations, the UN Security Council Group of Friends and at UN press stakeouts in New York. see:
On W. Sahara, Not Answering on Morocco Lobbying, UN Decries Leaks to Press
On W. Sahara, France Downplays Rights & Free Movement, King to Visit?
On Western Sahara, France Says Only 1 “Friend Has Problems,” Draft Not Agreed?
The latest UN Secretary General ’s Report on Western Sahara released on 5 April 2012 can be downloaded here
Carne Ross
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 17 April 2012
The Arab Spring began in the Western Sahara. In late 2010, the indigenous Saharawi population of this territory demonstrated against the occupying Moroccan authorities. Their demonstrations were violently put down. Eleven Saharawis were killed.
Mailonline
By Simon Walters And Glen Owen
14 April 2012
Nick Clegg faces embarrassment after it was disclosed that his wife represents a firm that has been accused of trampling on the human rights of ‘Africa’s last colony’.
A ‘substantial’ part of lawyer Miriam Clegg’s work, for which she is paid up to £500,000 a year, is understood to come from Moroccan mining giant OCP.
Read more >>
