Moroccan authorities have set in motion a wave of migration to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta to punish it for providing hospital care to leaders of the Polisario Front, writes Dick Nichols.
Morocco
Morocco has become the fourth Arab nation to normalise relations with the state of Israel. Previously clandestine, Morocco’s cooperation with the Israeli government stretches back decades, writes Rupen Savoulian.
In an exclusive broadcast, US-based independent news outlet Democracy Now! broke the media blockade and visited the occupied Western Sahara in the northwest of Africa to document the decades-long Sahrawi struggle for freedom and occupying power Morocco’s violent crackdown.
The Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions (ATTAC) is an international movement for social, environmental and democratic alternatives that organises against free trade policies that grant huge powers to corporations at the expense of people and the planet.
Popular mobilisation in the Rif region in Morocco’s north have continued and spread to several of the North African country’s towns, despite repression by security forces and the regime's attempts to discredit the movement.
Meanwhile, several thousand police officers have been sent to Al Hoceima to stop the demonstrations.
Twenty civil society groups from across Africa have released the statement below in support of protests in Morocco and other North African countries against growing state repression, resource theft and imperialist expansion. They call for respect for people’s rights and just development. The statement is reported from Pambazuka.
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Sidi Ahmed Eddia, secretary-general of the Confederated Union of Saharawi Workers (CSTS) was born in El Aaiun in 1948 and died there on January 3, aged 68.
He was well known for his activism, not only for workers’ rights, but also for many other causes supporting Saharawi rights in general. Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, has largely been occupied by Morocco since the 1970s, and many Saharawis live in refugee camps in Algeria.
Proceedings in the latest in the United Nations’ ongoing conferences on Climate Change — the November 7–18 COP22 that just concluded in Marrakech, Morocco — were disturbed by the news of the US election result.
A belligerently anti-environmental president is set to take office in the world’s greatest greenhouse polluting nation at the same time a shaky international climate treaty is being pieced together that will need US involvement to be effective.
Braodcasting from the November 7-18 United Nations climate talks in Marrakech, Morocco, Democracy Now! reported on an issue that is largely ignored: Morocco’s 41-year occupation of the Western Sahara, considered by many to be Africa’s last colony.
Moroccan protesters have taken to the streets in recent days, taking advantage of the global spotlight provided by the November 7-18 United Nations COP22 climate talks in Marrakech. Mouhcine Fikri could have been any one of them.
Fikri was the fishmonger whose awful death in the back of a garbage collection truck was caught on mobile phone footage that subsequently spread across social media to ignite large demonstrations in Morocco.
The World Meteorological Organisation has warned that 2016 was set to be the hottest year on record by a significant margin livescience.com said.
WMO scientists told diplomats gathered in Marrakech, Morocco, for the November 7–18 United Nations COP22 climate talks that temperatures are 1.2˚C above pre-industrial times.
Morocco is eagerly promoting its green credentials in its hosting of the November 7–18 United Nations COP22 climate change conference in Marrakesh. But a new report discloses that the North African country is consolidating its hold on occupied Western Sahara through European-built energy projects.
Surrounded by a barren desert landscape in the far south west of Algeria, about 100,000 people inhabit refugee camps, entirely dependent on aid from the international community. About 100 kilometres away, behind a 2700 km long border fence, is their homeland — Western Sahara.
In Morocco, thousands of people have been protesting across the country after a fish seller was crushed to death in a garbage truck on October 28 while trying to retrieve fish confiscated by police.
Video circulating online appears to show Mouhcine Fikri jumping into the back of the truck to rescue his swordfish, before being crushed to death by its compactor. According to local reports, Moroccan authorities prohibit the sale of swordfish at this time of year.
Western Sahara is the last territory in Africa recognised by the United Nations as non-self-governing.
Spanish colonial occupation was ended in 1975 by the struggle of the Polisario Front. However, independence was denied by a secret agreement between Spain and Morocco for a Moroccan invasion.
Since the invasion about half the Saharawi population have lived in refugee camps on the border with Algeria while the remainder living under Moroccan occupation are becoming outnumbered by Moroccan settlers.
Western Sahara is recognised by the United Nations as the last non-self-governing territory in Africa. Between 1973 and 1991 it was at war, as the pro-independence Polisario Front fought first against colonial rulers Spain, and after 1975, against Morocco, which invaded with Spanish encouragement.
In 1991, a United Nations-sponsored ceasefire was supposed to bring peace, based on a referendum on independence. However, the UN-promised referendum has never been held. Overt support from France, and more tacit support from the US, has enabled Morocco to have it indefinitely postponed.
Offshore oil drilling operations off Western Sahara, carried out by the US firm Kosmos Energy, were denounced by Western Sahara Resources Watch (WSRW) on March 2.
“Kosmos Energy did nothing to obtain the consent of the people of Western Sahara,” said WSRW chair Erik Hagen.
The Dallas-based company said its exploration well had not yielded a commercial find and would be plugged, Associated Press said on March 2.
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