Sahrawi prisoner dies after hunger strike

Mohamed Burmin, 22, died after a brief hunger strike, initiated on April 30th along with other political prisoners held by the Moroccan islamo-fascist imperialist regime, in demand for their human rights. 

Mohamed was diabetic, so he suffered such strong effects from his fast that he had to abandon it just four days after its beginning. He could not recover and eventually died. 

Source: Herri Kolore[eu].

Internationalism: protest at Morocco's consulate for Sahrawi political prisoners

Dozens gathered today at Morocco's consulate in Bilbao (Basque Country) in support of Sahrawi political prisoners especially and in homage to all political prisoners of oppressed peoples of the World (West Sahara, Basque Country, Palestine, Kurdistan, Wallmapu, Colombia, Corsica, Galicia, etc.) under the slogan: "Freedom for the political prisoners of the World". 

"Let out the prisoners of Sahara"

Almost when the protest was scheduled to end, several activists hang a huge banner of solidarity with Sahrawi prisoners from the facade of the Moroccan consulate as can be seen in the image.

Police intervened but could do little other than identify the activists.

Fascist Morocco replaced Fascist Spain as colonial master of West Sahara in 1975. Since then an endless state of war exist.

Source: Herri Kolore[es].

Morocco's military trial issues heavy punishment against Sahrawi activists

You may recall that in 2010, Moroccan armed forces attacked the Justice and Dignity Camp near El Aaiun, murdering many. The subsequent popular uprising at El Aaiun and other Sahrawi occupied towns was met with a military backed pogrom. Now the fascist regime of Morocco has pretended to close that chapter, the first episode of the so-called Arab Spring, preceding the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions only by a matter of months, by holding a mock military trial in which 24 arrested Sahrawis have been sentenced only on the "evidence" of contradictory confessions obtained by means of torture. 

The 24 Sahrawis have been punished with life sentences or 20 years in prison, depending on the case. While no original source talks of dead occupant forces, Morocco pretends that eleven of their uniformed thugs were killed, and these people have been arbitrarily accused of their unreal deaths. To add injury to this mockery, the prosecutor presented TV images of Palestinian dead children as evidence, pretending that they are victims of the Justice and Dignity Camp, caused not by the Moroccan criminals but by the accused. 

The defense, naturally, asked for acquittal on the grounds that the self-accusations were totally contradictory. They also argued that the photos in which the accused appeared together with members of the POLISARIO Front (in useless unilateral truce since 22 years ago) are the real reason behind the persecution of these people specifically. 

Source: Gara[es].

See also for background:

• Morocco murders young activists in West Sahara (Oct 2010)
  
• Morocco attacks the Justice and Dignity Camp, triggering Sahrawi intifada (Nov 2010)
• Morocco blacks out all information from West Sahara, open war may begin at any moment (Nov 2010)
• Huge pogrom in Aaiun reported. Spain knew beforehand (Nov 2010)
• West Sahara pogrom: corpses left on the streets, racist identification (Nov 2010)
• From inside El Aaiun: the genocide continues while the World remains silent (Nov 2010)
• Moroccan dictatorship begins political trial against Sahrawis (Feb 2013)
• And, for more details, category: West Sahara.

Moroccan dictatorship begins political trial against Sahrawis

Pro-Sahrawi demo at Madrid in 2010.

Maybe you still remember the Moroccan massacres of Sahrawi protesters that preceded the "Arab Spring" of 2011 by just a few months. Maybe you recall that they set up a camp at the outskirts of El Aaiun, the capital of West Sahara, and that this peaceful camp was razed by Moroccan colonial troops, not before murdering some kids taking part in it. 

This first attack was followed by a media blackout and a huge anti-Native pogrom at El Aaiun with support of France and Spain.

Now the occupant power, Morocco, is staging a political trial under military jurisdiction, against 24 participants in the Justice and Dignity Camp accusing them of belonging to "armed gang", which is obviously a lie. 

Source: Gara[es].

France, Spain, Morocco: alliance of terrorist states against the peoples!

Sahrawi prisoner of conscience begins hunger strike against prison abuses

Hassanna Jalal, Sahrawi political prisoner, began on Saturday a hunger strike in Tarudanat Prison in response to the physical abuse and provocations suffered, culminating in the prison guards taking all his possessions (breaching law 23/98 which regulate basic prisoners' rights - in theory) .

Jalal was sentenced to four years of prison for taking part in peaceful demonstrations for the independence of West Sahara in 2008. He recently suffered abdominal surgery and went through two other political fasts, so his relatives are worried about the dangers to his health and even his life as he goes through this new hunger strike.

Source: Gara[es].

Morocco detains and tortures two teenagers in occupied El Aaiun

Two minors, Uadih Sal-lami and Mehdi Baluzza were arrested without charges and tortured by the Moroccan occupation forces in West Sahara, reports Tercera Información[es].

Sal-lami (pictured) has been the one most badly hurt by the occupation forces, who damaged his arm and leg, as well as the mouth.

The agression is part of racist raid in a neighborhood near a newly built station of the occupation forces.

Sahrawi political prisoners in hunger strike for a month already (Pravda)

Five Saharawi political prisoners have withstood a heroic hunger strike since March 2: Mahjoub Oulad Cheik, Atiko Barray, Hassan El Ouali, Abdelaziz Barray and Cherif Ennassiri. They are held in deplorable conditions in the Black Jail of El Aiun. Why? Because they dared to take part in a peaceful demonstration for the self-determination of Western Sahara last year in the occupied Saharawi city of Dakhla.

More info at Pravda.

External article: "Remember the Saharawi People" (Pravda)

23 Saharawi prisoners have today, December 1, been on an indefinite hunger strike for one month, bringing awareness to the plight of the Saharawi people of Western Sahara, invaded and occupied illegally by Morocco in 1975, and who have since been denied the right to a vote to determine their future. What does the world community do? Nothing. 

Morocco annexed, invaded and repopulated Western Sahara against international law in 1975 and has since refused to hold a referendum on independence or autonomy.

... continue reading.

Echoes from the Class War (Oct 23)

From the Greek strike (source)

Along the week I have already mentioned some most relevant news:

• Occupy Hong-Kong
• Global protest camps and Greek General Strike
• Greek General Strike (second day)
• ETA declares the "definite cessation" of armed activity (plus politicians' reactions, plus opinions from prisoners' relatives)

Here comes all the rest, what found no niche or what is newer:

Occupy the World and related class struggles

It is really getting global. No wonder.

• Occupy Karachi
• Occupy Stockholm
• Occupy Dame Street, Dublin
• Occupy Toronto
• The ol' good Occupy Wall Street (NYC) grows bigger
• Arrest of nonviolent protesters
• Verizon striking workers
• Occupy London, which is becoming one of the references
• At The Guardian
• Occupy Berlin 
• Yesterday's demo  
• Clashes between antifascists and police on anti-bank action[es]
• North California
• Teachers' demo at Madrid
• Athens clashes' video
• Eviction of Traveler camp in London[es]
• Police against attacks students in Chile[es]
•  Chilean students take Senate (10 arrested)
• Protests in Palestine (Beit Ummar, Bil'in, Kafr Kadum, Nabi Saleh, Ni'ilin, Bituniya, Sheikh Jarrah, Tel Aviv, Walaje)
• Sana'a: women protest against the regime
• Occupy Jakarta
• Violent repression of peaceful protests in Malaysia
• Violent repression of peaceful 'Occupy' protest at Melbourne, Australia
• Indonesian troops storm independence march at West Papua city
• West Papua: it's a gold mine (by C. Pottins)
• Violent repression in West Sahara
• Opinion articles:
• A. Ford at The Commune: 15th october 2011: birth of a global anti-capitalist movement? 
• P. Escobar at ATOL: Occupy World Street

Basque Country: huge demo for 'solution':

Yet another demo numbering thousands occupied the streets of Bilbao yesterday (Gara[es], SA[es])

The Basque People (= Nation, Country) wants a solution

Video at Branka[eu]


Nuclear Japan

• Large anti-nuclear demo at Shibuya, Tokyo
• Third Fukushima worker dies (septic shock caused by cancer)
• Former IAEA expert: Fukushima as serious as Chernobyl
• Radioactive ash piles up
• Councilor of Minamisoma campaigns for co-citizens to evacuate
• $13,000 for decontaminating your home: no guarantees it won't be recontaminated right after we leave
• Neutron ray measured in Tokyo (not detectable by Geiger counters)
• Japan allows triple radioactive cesium in food than USSR did after Chernobyl. More than 50% of seafood radioactive
• 'Nothing left to eat' (that is not radioactive)
• German comedians make fun of Japanese nuclear criminal irresponsibility (huge success in Japan, where nothing like that is shown in TV)
• Radioactive steam continuously leaking from destroyed reactor #3
• Gundersen: this should not happen if reactors in 'cold shutdown'
• Massive amounts of groundwater flowing into reactors 1-4
• Destroyed reactor #3: video of upper floors
• Storing radioactive debris at  river heads

Other news

• German security agency plants spyware in computers while appealing for 'less democracy'
• Spanish cops ask to use sky masks so they can't be identified in videos when they beat protesters[es]
• Hungarian Nazis visit Auschwitz in uniform and performing their hate rituals[es]
• Central America suffers heavy floods[es]
• Honduras: missing farmer Segundo Mendoza was murdered[es]
• Canada: protest against George Bush Jr.
• Canada: radiation in country much worse than admitted
• Canada: mothers demonstrate for decriminalization of raw milk
• USA: alfalfa contaminated by Monsanto artificial genes
• USA: FDA allowed dangerous levels of pollutants in seafood after BP oil spill
• Hawaii: Japanese radioactive debris arriving faster than thought
• Bolivia: road through reserve not to be built
• Pakistan: 7-hours emergency declared after heavy water leak at nuclear reactor near Karachi
• Pakistan: protest against Clinton visit
• Kurdistan: PKK ambushes Turkish Army, kills three Turkish soldiers and injuries 6 more[es]
• Sea levels to keep rising for 500 years if we do not act now radically

From inside El Aaiun: the genocide continues while the World remains silent

Two Spanish solidarity activists who remain hidden in the Sahrawi capital, Isabel Terraza and Antonio Velázquez, have managed to get the following video hang on the Internet (in Spanish, English transcript by me follows):

City of El Aaiun, territories occupied by Morocco in West Sahara, November 14 2010.

To the International Community, to the United Nations Security Council, to the International Red Cross.

Antonio Velázquez and Isabel Terraza are being witness of the genocide that is being committed by the Moroccan regime against the Sahrawi civilian population right now in the capital of occupied West Sahara.

Since the violent evacuation of the camp of ..., 15 km from El Aaiun on Novemeber 8th, and until this day, in the streets and the homes of the city, the Moroccan security forces repress violently the Sahrawi civilian population.

The Moroccan occupation regime is not allowing entrance to the media in order to hide so many atrocities. That is why they want to kill us: because we are offering our witness account to the whole World.

We have been hiding since several days ago in the city of El Aaiun. But thousands of Sahrawis are in the same situation... or worse. Because Moroccan policemen and soldiers enter by force in their homes, torture them and many die from these tortures.

We denounce this genocide that the Moroccan regime is committing against the Sahrawi people and we ask:

• An immediate intervention of the UN Security Council in order to guarantee the legitimate rights of the Sahrawi people.
• The urgent arrival of the International Red Cross in order to attend the victims of repression.
• That the International Community condemn the violent attack of Morocco against the civilian Sahrawi population.

This is an international emergency and it is necessary that all international organisms stop this massacre. 

Massive demo at Madrid in support of West Sahara

Thousands demonstrated yesterday in the Spanish capital, Madrid, against the Moroccan genocidal aggression this week against West Sahara. More precise numbers are not known to me at the moment but Sahara Libre claims it was larger than the one at the general strike of September 29.

Major unions and all political parties but the ruling PSOE (yes, the conservative PP also supported the demo) were there. Famous actors Javier Bardem and Rosa María Sardá read a manifesto at the demonstration closure at the Puerta del Sol plaza, demanding the Spanish government a responsible attitude and stopping all weapon sales to Morocco. They also demanded from the UN and the EU a strong intervention that prevents the massacres and guarantees the right of West Sahara to decide its destiny.

People cheered slogans such as Morocco guilty, Spain responsible, If this is not fixed, war, war, war, Zapatero traitor and Sahara free. Police impeded them from reaching to the ruling party's offices at Ferraz street.

According to the UN, Spain is still the administrator power, as decolonization was not properly executed. West Sahara was a province of Spain, just like Guadalajara or León, until 1975, when the ailing fascist regime pacted an illegitimate deal with Morocco and Mauritana, allowing them to divide the country. Resistance by the POLISARIO Front and widespread recognition of the Sahrawi Republic by the African Union and its member states forced Mauritania to retreat and take the Sahrawi side instead soon after. Morocco then unilaterally annexed the former Mauritanian-occupied area.

A 20-year long truce exists between the POLISARIO Front and Morocco under UN auspices but, as often happens with these protracted peace processes, this has only served Morocco to consolidate its occupation bringing little benefits, if any, to Sahrawis. The strongest pressure in this matter is exerted by Algeria that not only hosts the huge refugee camp of Tindouf, where the government in exile resides, but has also closed all road borders with Morocco, disrupting its economy to a large extent. However all this dependence on Algeria also places the Sahrawi resistance subordinate to the wider interests of this country. Morocco claims also a good deal of Algerian territory in the Sahara. In the past it also claimed all Mauritania and parts of Mali. Moroccan official maps show no borders by the Sahara towards Algeria.

However in the truce, Sahrawis have forged a large nonviolent movement, whose best known figure is Aminatu Haidar, known as the Sahrawi Gandhi.

Sources for the demo: Al Jazeera, Gara.

West Sahara pogrom: corpses left on the streets, racist indentification

The pogrom at El Aaiun is becoming worse and worse: amidst the Morocco-imposed informative blackout it seems that the POLISARIO Front is now the only reliable source of information. 

They denounce that corpses of murdered people with their throats opened often, some of them children, are being left in the streets of El Aaiun in order to sow terror.

Policemen in plain clothes and settler death squads go house by house, beating people and kidnapping some of them to unknown destinations. Many people are missing. 

The Sahrawi government in exile has declared that there are some 723 injured and 150 missing people. 

Racist identification measures

The Moroccan dictatorship has imposed a new method of racist discrimination: from now on Moroccan settlers (males) will have to carry a white cap, provided by the police after proper identification, this cap will not be given to native Sahrawis, who are nevertheless obligued to show their faces when going to the streets. 

Source: La Haine[es]

Update: the Intifada extends to Smara and Tan Tan

I already mentioned before that there had been protests in Smara, repressed by the occupants. This information from Rebelión is admittedly based on rumors but that's the best we have right now: Smara and Tan Tan have joined El Aaiun in the uprising. There may be other towns rebelling and/or being repressed but we do not know yet.

Huge pogrom in El Aaiun reported. Spain knew beforehand.

Gara reports that that, while the Moroccan TV is emitting images of calm corresponding only to the settler neighborhoods in El Aaiun (West Saharan capital), the reality is similar to that of Pinochet's dictatorship: one of state terrorism in which police and settler death squads run amok, destroying homes and specially vehicles, beating people indiscriminately and bringing them to unknown detention or execution places. 

Eight bodies have been found at a riverbed, including that of a 7 years-old boy. 

It also mentions that Morocco and the POLISARIO Front have agreed to meet for negotiations in spite of all. They will take place in December and January, instead of November as it was scheduled before the Moroccan aggression.

El País reports that the Spanish government knew beforehand of the Moroccan attack, what has been denied by the Minister of Presidence R. Jauregi.

France has condemned the expulsion of a member of the French Parliament, communist Jean Paul Lecoq. Meanhwile the expulsion of several Spanish MPs and members of regional parliaments has been totally ignored by Madrid. 

Spain is technically, according to UN, the administrator power of West Sahara, as decolonization never happened properly (Spain could not give the Sahara to Morocco unilaterally, according to international law). 

La Haine reports on the violent attacks by Basque police against legal demonstrators here at Bilbao, after discussing with the Moroccan consulate, injuring several and arresting two. (I knew of this by word but did not know the exact details).

Morocco blacks out all information from West Sahara, open war may begin at any moment

Video of the Moroccan attack against the Justice and Dignity Camp and early Intifada events (text in Spanish):

At the beginning of the video the occupants pretext the beginning of negotiations with POLISARIO Front (imposed by UN) as "the reason" why the camp "must be evacuated". In other words: they want to use this to trick the POLISARIO into open war again and that way sabotage the negotiations.

The water cannons you can see threw hot water, a tactic I have never heard before about.

Two babies were found among the rubble of the camp by some of the people who resisted till the end. Their mothers are missing, as are other 300 people.

Thawra reports that there was an earlier attack against the camp on monday evening. When the camp was closed by occupant forces leaving a long queue of vehicles attempting enter. The Sahrawis tried to protest peacefully by staging a sit down but police charged against them.

This triggered protests in El Aaiun, burning Moroccan flags and portraits of the tyrant King Mohammed II. These protests were brutally quelled by police and settlers (these "settlers" are denounced elsewhere as being nothing but policemen in civilian clothes - unsure).

Thawra also reports of at least 7 killed and hundreds of injured in the attack against the nonviolent camp.

This massacre triggered the response by the citizens of El Aaiun, who took over the city, burning all kind of Moroccan and international corporate buildings (National Fishing Office, seven Western Union offices, four banks, seven police stations, including the central one, and all TV stations), set up barricades and showed proudly the banners of the Arab Democratic Sahrawi Republic.

Subsequent repression resulted in 300 missing people and maybe thousands of arrested, as well as an unknown number of fatal casualties (at least a dozen in the Sahrawi side and one in the Moroccan one).

In spite of this El Aaiun has resisted all night. Police distributed weapons among settlers, who attacked their native neighbors' homes and burned their cars. Today we just do not know what is happening, as Morocco has imposed a total blackout and is impeding foreign press from arriving to destiny. In Djalla police repressed a protest in solidarity with the El Aaiun uprising.

In Spain, where many Sahrawi exiles live and where sympathy for the Sahrawi cause is almost universal, protests have continued today, in some cases facing police repression.

Protest at Madrid

Open war may begin again

An announcement that the POLISARIO Front is considering breaking the 20-year-long ceasefire was met with cheers in some of them. However they are still discussing the matter, as it seems obvious that is precisely what Morocco wants to achieve with this repression.

Main source: La Haine, where you can find many other videos.

Morocco attacks Justice and Dignity Camp, triggering Sahrawi intifada

Updated with info from Gara at 6:00 pm CET.

The Moroccan Army has attacked tonight without notice the Justice and Dignity Camp set up by Sahrawi activists near the Sahrawi capital of El Aaiu, forcing  20,000 people, including full families, in it to move out.

The attack has included, it seems machine gunfire, causing at least one mortal victim. Casualties data is at the moment confuse with the RASD government in exile talking of one dead and hundreds injured, and earlier its military-political force, the POLISARIO Front, speaking of 13 killed instead.

The survivors have walked to El Aaiun and taken the city, burning police stations. The video below has been directly embedded from a non-YouTube site (specifically Cuestionatelotodo) because YouTube is censoring access to it to non-users, as it has been flagged as "inappropriate" by some users, probably agents of the Moroccan dictatorship or its friends: Israel, Saudia, the USA and France.

In it you can (hopefully) see masses of unarmed Sahrawis (I saw Bedouin sword, nothing else) chanting slogans in Arabic, while the reporter explains in Spanish the details of the attack and how the fire we see in the background is a police station. Apparently the situation is the same across the city and the word intifada (revolution in Arabic) is repeated several times as descriptive of the situation. 

According to the latest information, the situation now in El Aaiun has worsened, as the Army has entered the city and is shooting against the population. Regional TV, post offices and district administration offices are on fire. 

Spanish solidarity activists report that several death have arrived to hospital, from both the camp and the city. Moroccan occupation authorities have reported three casualties among the occupation forces as well.

West Sahara or the Arab Democratic Sahrawi Republic was invaded by Morocco (and temporarily also by Mauritania) in 1975 against the will of its people, resulting in a guerrilla war or at least 20 years. In the 1990s the UN bartered a truce and proposed a roadmap to self-determination that Morocco has been sabotaging ever since.

At the moment the POLISARIO Front guerrilla is not militarily active but the revolt has switched its focus to one of widespread civil disobedience inside West Sahara. To this Morocco has only been able to respond with more and more repression.

Go viral and spread the word, please, as it is obvious that Morocco is trying to silence this most important news by all means available.

For solidarity demonstrations today in the state of Spain, check Sahara Libre. There are demos called in all major cities. 

Brief update on the protest in Bilbao (in front of the Moroccan consulate): there was a lot more people than I expected, considering the short notice, I'm guessing that maybe 500 people, mostly (but not only) Sahrawi immigrants. We were only allowed to stand on the sidewalk and police presence was noticeable. We could only stay for an hour or so.

Three of the Sahara injured kidnapped by the gendarmerie

I reported a few days ago on the murder of a Sahrawi teenager and the injuring of several other people at El Aaiun, capital of occupied West Sahara.

The developments are that, of the other five injured, who were kept cuffed to their beds at hospital, three have been kidnapped by the gendarmerie and brought to some unknown destiny. The other two remain at hospital in the same conditions.

Meanwhile the Moroccan occupants buried Nayed Elgarhi by night at an unknown place so the family and neighbors could not mourn him.

Source: La Haine[es]

Morocco murders young activists in West Sahara

Nayem Elgarhi

Moroccan troops murdered  boy aged just 14, Elgarhi Nayem Foidal Mohamed Sueidi, and injured seven other teenagers when they stumbled upon a checkpoint of the occupation forces at the entrance of the camp raised by democratic Sahrawi organizations at the outskirts of El Aaiun.

Only some of the identities are known as of now: Garhi Zoubeir (brother of Nayem), Alaoui Lagdaf, Dawdi Ahmed, Salek Filali and Abderhaman Humid. They are at Hospital Hassan El Mehdi and nothing else is known yet about their situation.

According to the known version, the teenagers were about to access the Justice and Dignity Camp when they stumbled upon the Royal Gendarmerie's checkpoint. They pulled back and were persecuted by the occupant troops with the tragic result already mentioned.

A second victim may be also dead.

Camp destroyed at Smara

The occupant forces have also destroyed a camp at Smara, beating people indiscriminately and arresting known activist Daida Abdeslam.

At the El Aaiun camp, police has raised a wall enclosing it, making it a de-facto concentration camp.

Images from the Justice and Dignity Camp

The comments of the video are in Spanish with Arabic accent but he essentially says that the people are there to demand from the EU that Moroccan products from the occupied territory are not accepted as normal imports, that Sahrawis feel they are being robbed of their resources, be them mineral (phosphates) or animal (fish), while they are forced to survive in abject poverty (unemployment among Sahrawis is nearly total) and deprived of all civil rights and their sovereign rights as a distinct nation.

Sources[es]: La Haine, Sahara Libre (1, 2, 3)