Middle East Monitor, January 19, 2023

Morocco is embroiled in a corruption scandal that is engulfing the European Parliament. So far, at least four individuals have been arrested and charged with “participation in a criminal organisation, money laundering and corruption,” the prosecutor has said. The four remain in prison.
In Australia, we are aware that Morocco has organised several paid visits to Morocco and Western Sahara by parliamentary representatives in order to influence Australian members of parliament. Morocco did succeed in obtaining Australian government agreement to open an embassy in Rabat some years ago. However, there is no embassy in Algiers, although Algeria is a country that Australia has more business with than Morocco!

Read more: Middle East Monitor

The representative of the Polisario Front in Australia, Kamal Fadel, participated in the Palestine solidarity conference held in Melbourne in January 2023.

The Palestine Solidarity Conference brought together a diverse range of people who are passionate about the Palestinian and Saharawi cause, and are interested in campaigning, organising, and advocating for the just causes. Over three days, participant engaged in workshops and plenaries, and explored avenues in which the movement can work together to achieve a bigger and more sustainable impact.

A workshop was organised on the striking similarities between the issue of Western Sahara and the Palestinian cause.

Western Sahara Resource Watch (WSRW), 13 October 2022.

For the first time in 6 years, a cargo of conflict minerals is heading its way to Australia, expected to arrive on 18 October. On 12 October a group of Saharawi refugees protested against the shipment. The demonstration took place in one of the Saharawi refugee camps in the middle of the Algerian desert where half the people of Western Sahara have sought refuge after Morocco brutally invaded their land. (cont…)

Read more….

Alex Whitehead
Honi Soit, August 7, 2022

The continued colonial occupation of Western Sahara is rife with state-sanctioned human rights abuses, brutality, and ethnic cleansing. Still, within the state, resistance thrives.

Western Sahara, a territory situated in the North-West of Africa’s Maghreb, has been left behind by history. A victim of Moroccan ideas of national restoration and Spanish colonial objectives, the nation, which is home to almost 200,000 Indigenous Saharawi people, still struggles to decolonise (cont).

Article by Alex Whitehead…

https://peoplesdispatch.org/, October 10, 2022
by Pavan Kulkarni

The UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) became “hostage to the Moroccan authorities,” unable even “to report on the human rights situation in the territory,” said Kamal Fadel, Western Sahara’s representative to Australia and the Pacific…

Report from Pavan Kulkarni

Kerry Smith, Green Left Weekly, Issue 1363, October 5, 2022

According to Western Sahara Resource Watch (WSRW), Australian company Incitec Pivot (IPL) confirmed in a meeting with Australian trade unionists on September 27 that it is expecting a delivery of phosphate rock exported by Morocco from occupied Western Sahara.

Green Left Weekly article

Zvi Bar’el, Haaretz | Middle East News, Sep 22, 2022

The king of Morocco, Mohammed VI, is a sick man. He underwent heart surgery two years ago and this year came down with the coronavirus.
The country has been spending millions of dollars on military hardware but still hasn’t recovered from the effects of a serious drought and the COVID pandemic. Youth unemployment is soaring, along with rental prices and public outrage

Article

Progressive International, 15 September 2022

Noam Chomsky, Niki Ashton, Jeremy Corbyn, Clare Daly, Yanis Varoufakis, Özlem Demirel, and many others have signed a statement demanding Western Sahara’s decolonization.

They call on others to Join them: