In the blistering summer heat of the Algerian desert, 28-year old Sahrawi refugee Brahim Boudjemaa is telling me his story. It is one shared by many like him, that of anger, frustration, and a hope against the odds. Born and still living in a refugee camp, he sweeps his arm across his chest so as to show me what I already knew. The sparse surroundings of a harsh desert climate and a conflict that is thirty years old; Africa's longest running land dispute , the Western Sahara. And then he tells me of a prison in the Moroccan-occupied territory and of an intifida that the world seems to have ignored.
This is not a new story, only one that has seldom been told. An uprising among a marginalized Sahrawi population finally erupted into a full-scale protest in the streets of Laayoune, capital of the Moroccan held Western Sahara. It rapidly spread to neighboring cities of Tan-Tan, Dakhla, Smara and then to the universities in Agadir, Marrakech, Casablanca, Rabat and Fez. This was in May 2005 and the pro-independence protests met heavy resistance from Moroccan security forces. Over the course of the next three years, several hundred Sahrawi have been jailed, and a Crisis Group report(pdf) says secret detention centers may have since surfaced. While many were later released, Amnesty International (AI) says some protesters received six-year sentences. Accusations of torture abound and then confirmed by the Moroccan Association of Human Rights (AMDH).
Moroccan security forces arbitrarily arrest anyone suspected of pro-independence sympathies. No freedom of assembly, no rights to demonstrate, and a disproportionate use of force are some of the human rights abuses sweeping throughout the territories. Foreign media is banned from reporting on the Western Sahara inside Morocco. Moroccan journalists criticizing King Mohammed VI's policy face severe punishment. And yet someone is bearing witness as the stories continue to reach AI, AMDH, and even Brahim, isolated in a desert thousands of kilometers away. It reminds me of what Milan Kundera once wrote, "The struggle against authority, is the struggle against memory and forgetting." Perhaps in this context, Brahim's hope against the odds may at least be partially realized.
And in this spirit, I commence the journey of FPA's latest blog. Looking forward to your comments. All the best – Nikolaj
