Yearly Archives: 2009

Fetim Sellami: ‘I am not a slave’

Tony Iltis, Green Left Weekly, 21 June 2009

Saharawi refugee and preschool teacher Fetim Sellami is a central character in the Australian documentary Stolen, a film set in the refugee camps in south-west Algeria that have been home to 165,000 Saharawi refugees since their country, Western Sahara, was invaded by Morocco in 1975.
However, when she and her husband, Baba Hocine Mahfoud, attended its June 11 premiere at the Sydney Film Festival, they did not receive red carpet treatment, despite the long distance they had travelled.

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Bitter dispute over Stolen documentary – ABC 7.30 report

ABC 7.30 Report
Monday, June 15, 2009 8:35 AEST

A bitter dispute has erupted over the accuracy of a taxpayer-funded feature documentary screened at the Sydney Film Festival. The film, called ‘Stolen’, features the story of Fetim Sellami and her family, who live in a refugee camp in the Algerian Sahara Desert. Fetim Sellami has been flown to Sydney by the independence movement that runs the camp, to enable her to denounce her depiction in the documentary as a slave, and the allegation that such slavery is widespread in the camps.

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Treading a mined path to freedom

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John Thorne, Foreign correspondent

TINDOUF, Algeria // Hot with anger and clutching a stone, Brahim Labid abandoned caution and charged straight into a minefield towards the defences of the Moroccan army.

“When I got close I tried to throw the stone and at that moment the explosion happened,” said Mr Labid, 19, a refugee from Western Sahara.

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Norwatch: Norwegian investor blacklists fertilizer company

For the second time, KLP has thrown an Australian fertilizer firm out of its portfolios due to Western Sahara trade. The Western Sahara liberation movement Front Polisario congratulates KLP with its decision.

“KLP has made a right decision. It shows that their ethical and legal analysis of the phosphate industry in Western Sahara is done very thoroughly. We hope other investors will follow KLP’s example”, Brahim Mokhtar, Polisario’s representative to the Nordic countries, told Norwatch.

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AWSA film evening celebrates the 36 year anniversary of the foundation of Polisario

On Friday evening 15th of May 2009 the Australia Western Sahara Association (AWSA) organised an evening of films at Leichhardt Town Hall in Sydney to commemorate the foundation of Polisario and the beginning of the struggle for independence in Western Sahara.
                                                     Read more about the film evening >>image003.jpgimage0032.jpg