Yearly Archives: 2012

Javier Bardem talks about his latest film projects

The National – Arts and Culture

Alex Ritman, Apr 8, 2012

Javier Bardem’s documentary about the Western Sahara conflict, Sons of the Clouds, premiered at the Berlinale in February.

This year’s festival, a notoriously politicised event at the best of times, was predictably heavy with features relating to the Arab Spring. But with Sons of the Clouds, which was produced by and stars Bardem, came a film highlighting an Arab conflict that has remained out of the limelight.

As claimed by Noam Chomsky in the documentary’s opening scenes, the Arab Spring did not, as widely held, begin with the self-immolation of Mohammed….(cont…)

Full report >>

AWSA writes to Security Council about monitoring of human rights abuses in occupied WS

26 March 2012. AWSA President Lyn Allison on behalf of AWSA has written to the Secretary General of the United Nations, about monitoring of human rights in occupied WS.

The letter emphasises the fact that MINURSO – the UN mission in Western Sahara – is the only UN peacekeeping mission established since 1978 without a mandate to monitor human rights. This means that Morocco has been able, with impunity, to occupy Western Sahara and subject the Saharawis to arbitrary arrest, disappearances, false imprisonment, unfair trials, torture and the death penalty

26 March 2012 AWSA letter to Security Council >>

Press statement by Mr Khatri Adduh, Head of the Delegation of F.Polisario

Press Statement
Manhasset  March 13, 2012

The ninth round of negotiations between the Frente Polisario and the Kingdom of Morocco, took place from March 11 to 13, 2012 at Greentree (Manhasset) under the auspices of the Personal Envoy of UN Secretary General, Mr. Christopher Ross.During this round, the negotiations focused on the proposals of both parties and the ideas contained in paragraph 120 of the report of the Secretary General.
Continue reading →

Waiting for the Arab Spring in Western Sahara

Aljazeera Opinion, 14 March 2012
Article by Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, a former Pakistani high commissioner to the UK, exploring how a litany of volatile centre/periphery conflicts with deep historical roots were interpreted after 9/11 in the new global paradigm of anti-terrorism – with profound and often violent consequences.
Washington, DC – For 36 years, refugees from the Western Sahara have been waiting to return home. The fate of the Sahrawi nation of Western Sahara hangs in the balance this week. About 165,000 Sahrawi refugees in Algeria are eagerly watching the current UN-sponsored negotiations taking place outside of New York City on the status of their country.


Read Aljazeera Opinion article in full >>

Western Sahara: ‘No one will give us our freedom’

Green Left Weekly, Sunday, March 11, 2012

By Ryan Mallett-Outtrim & Laura Gilbie

After two decades of political deadlock, Africa’s oldest refugee population is losing faith in UN mandated peace negotiations.
“No one will give us our freedom — we must take it!,” Sahrawi journalist Embarka Elmehdi Said told Green Left Weekly.
Said sees little hope for a peaceful resolution to the crisis that has gripped Western Sahara since its independence from Spain in the 1970s.
A child when her family fled the Moroccan invasion of Western Sahara in 1975, Said has spent most of her life in the Polisario run refugee camps on the Western Sahar-Algeria

Read GLW article >>