Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Occupied Western Sahara. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Occupied Western Sahara. Afficher tous les articles

04/02/2023

EQUIPE MEDIA
Sahrawi journalist Hmetou El Kaouri sentenced to 20 years in prison

Equipe Media, Occupied Territories of Western Sahara, 3/2/2023

Hmetou El Kaouri* is a journalist for Smara News, in the occupied territories of Western Sahara.

On 7 September 2022, Hmetou El Kaouri went to the El Ayoun police station to renew his identity card and was then arrested and transferred to Smara. A warrant for his arrest dates to 2018.

El Kaouri was on the case file of Mohamed Salem Mayara, a journalist, and Mohamed Aljomayaai, a cameraman.

The three were charged with disruption of traffic, attacking public property, armed gathering, and attempted murder.

The latter charge of attempted murder was expunged from Mayara and Aljomayaai's file, and on 31 March 2018 they were sentenced to 6 months' imprisonment and 18 months suspended prison. They served the sentence and were released.

However, for El Kaouri, the charge of attempted murder was upheld and added to the other charges.

On 23 November 2022 he was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment in Laayoune.

On 18 January 2023, he was sentenced at second instance to 20 years' imprisonment.

The Committee for the Defence of Human Rights in Smara issued a statement in which they criticise the sentence and denounce the colonial policy without respect for international charters and laws. They also denounce the systematic repression against Saharawis, whether they are activists of the Saharawi cause, human rights activists or journalists.

They add that the charges were trumped up, and the sentence, unjust and harsh, came on top of a mock trial.

Hmetou El Kaouri is detained in El Ayoun prison.

* Hmetou El Kaouri is the name by which he is known to everyone. His Saharawi name is Mahmoud Mohamed Salem El Kaouri. Mahmoud El Kaouri is the name on his Moroccan passport.

27/12/2022

MARTIN JAY
Morocco Slush Fund in Brussels Was Network of Bent MEPs Which Qatar Accessed

Martin Jay, Strategic Culture, 22/12/2022

How much does the cash-for-whitewashing scandal effect Morocco’s current claims on Western Sahara, both at the UN and at EU level?


Corruptible, by Paolo Calleri

After the dust is starting to settle on the biggest corruption scandal the EU has ever had, it seems that it was not created by Qatar, but by Morocco which had a network of corrupt MEPs on the books for almost 20 years. But who else got the whitewashing service?

It has shaken both the foundations and the highest echelons of the EU elite in Brussels. But the Eva Kaili corruption case, which has so far jailed three MEPs, is not quite what it seems. Much as it would be desirable to pin the blame on cash-rich Qataris swanning about Brussels with suitcases of cash, recent investigations from Belgian authorities have unearthed that a Qatari minister came to Brussels recently and only had to go to a “one stop shop” – a cabal of cash-hungry MEPs who had been on the Moroccan payroll for at least 15 years to whitewash the kingdom’s human rights record and get the best deal for Western Sahara in terms of trade deal breaks and status.

This group of corrupt MEPs had been taking cash and gifts for at least 15 years and were well known on the Brussels circuit for their ‘pay-as-you-go’ services within the European parliament whose ‘foreign affairs committee’ – once considered prestigious and certainly important on the EU circuit – has now been left in tatters.

For decades Morocco got a free ride in Brussels. The question of sovereignty of its annexed Western Sahara was never raised. The rights of the citizens of this disputed region never put under the spotlight, while the territory itself benefited from an EU trade deal covering fish and minerals to name but a few. Even the human rights record, in general, of Morocco within its own country has been bypassed for so long as the EU once considered it the darling of the MENA region for its reforms on women’s rights, for example.

The whitewashing in general came from the European Parliament which the other EU institutions, to some extent, had to respect (although the EU courts refused ultimately to accept that Western Sahara could or should be included with Morocco in terms of benefiting from a trade deal with the EU).

So now, three key questions emerge which the Moroccan press, stalwart champions of self-censorship, will certainly not ask. How much does the cash-for-whitewashing scandal effect Morocco’s current claims on Western Sahara, both at the UN and at EU level? Secondly, does the EU now begin to look at Morocco without the rose-tinted specs and start to examine the bevy of arrests from anyone who questions decisions made on a high level – from journalists on trumped-up charges in jail to former ministers who have dared to criticise how the government and the powerful business elite go about running the country – and act accordingly?

And lastly, perhaps more importantly, is the unedifying subject of who else benefited from these dirty MEPs and their services? Anyone who follows the EU’s pathetic attempts at acting as a world player with a papier-mâché hegemony which it hilariously conjures up for Global South countries in particular will ask the obvious question about Israel. The abysmal dehumanisation of rights of the Palestinians who every day on social media we see having their land stolen, their olive trees uprooted or in many cases their homes destroyed by Israelis, who do so in the full knowledge that there will be no hue and cry from the West and in particular the EU itself. When just recently a Palestinian in the West Bank was shot dead at point blank range by an Israeli security officer who was wrestling with him, it didn’t make MSM channels and it certainly didn’t create any ripple of shockwaves among MEPs. How is that possible, one might ask, from an institution whose raison d’être is to protect human rights both within the EU and with those it interacts and trades with?

The last time the EU even feigned to threaten Israel over its draw-dropping human rights atrocities was in 2014 when a somewhat idealist and ‘Arabist’ Federica Mogherini entered office and just for a few weeks suggested that the EU should enforce a labelling system for goods made in occupied Palestine which make their way to European supermarkets. The idea quickly fizzled away, within a few weeks, and was never heard of again. Given what we know about the Moroccan network of MEPs on the baksheesh payroll, not to mention the date of Mogherini’s proposal, is it inconceivable that these same parliamentarians were taking cash to lobby their colleagues in committees to give Israel a break? The deafening and spooky silence from the EU on Israel’s daily genocide of the Palestinians is worrying, but now we know how the European Parliament operates when it comes to atrocities committed by MENA region countries – and how they are airbrushed out of the curriculum – it is hardly surprising that the brutality of the Israeli regime has intensified. The real story about corruption though in the European parliament is not the three MEPs taking cash but how the 702 other MEPs will want to now prevent any real investigation going on internally, all simply to save their jobs and preserve their cosy lifestyles.

24/12/2021

MARY LAWLOR
Sahrawi WHRD Sultana Khaya Reports Violent Attacks Under House Arrest

Mary Lawlor, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, srdefenders.org, 23/12/2021

Sahrawi Woman Human Rights Defender Sultana Khaya told me she has been forcibly held under house arrest for over a year, unable to leave, or to have any other family, or anyone else – including medics –  visit her, even when she is sick.

She told me how, after her arrest in November 2020, she has been held in her family’s house, with dozens of security officers guarding the doors, day and night, that her sister and her elderly mother are with her, and only her mother is allowed to leave to get food.

Sultana said she has not been charged with any crime, and that she would welcome a chance to respond to whatever allegations are against her. In June 2021 I joined with other UN independent experts in raising her treatment with the Moroccan authorities, noting that Sultana has been a prominent Woman Human Rights Defender for many years.

A 2007 attack on her resulted in her losing an eye, and she has been subjected to various attacks as a result of her human rights work.  Now she is held in indefinite detention in harsh conditions. Her house has been stripped all virtually all furniture and appliances, and she and her mother and sister all sleep in the same small room.

She told me that in recent months masked security agents have repeatedly raided the house during the night, tying her hands, blindfolding her and gagging her. She said during these raids she and her sister have been attacked, and that she has been raped. She named those who she said are the perpetrators, and is in constant fear of more attacks.

She also described how, during two of these raids, the attackers injected her with unknown substances, and that they have also thrown toxic liquids into the house, stripping the walls of paint and affecting her health. She says the poison has made her hair fall out and her teeth brittle. 

Sultana appears to be in serious danger, in declining health and vulnerable to further attacks. She has been held like this for 400 days.

 

29/09/2021

WSRW
Background briefing: upcoming CJEU ruling on Western Sahara

https://wsrw.org/images/logo.png


On 29 September, the EU Court of Justice (CJEU) will issue a ruling that is likely to affect EU-Morocco relations - already tense at present. The CJEU ruling regarding Western Sahara – illegally occupied by Morocco – will probably bring EU-Morocco relations to a boiling point. [See release from the CJEU]

The CJEU is currently reviewing the legality of applying the EU-Morocco Trade and Fisheries Agreements to Western Sahara, following an amendment to these agreements that specifically includes Western Sahara in their territorial scope.1 As such, the ruling will cross one of the Moroccan monarchy’s red lines – the “sacred” status of occupied Western Sahara in Morocco’s foreign policy.2 The case is brought to the CJEU by Polisario, the UN-recognized representative of the people of Western Sahara.

In 2016, the CJEU had already annulled the inclusion of Western Sahara in the EU-Morocco agreement on the liberalisation of agricultural and processed fisheries products. The Court underpinned its decision by stating that Western Sahara is a territory that is “separate and distinct” from Morocco, which has no sovereignty over or mandate to administer the territory. The Court stated that Western Sahara is a third party to the EU’s relations with Morocco and can only be affected by such relations with the explicit consent of the people of Western Sahara. In 2018, the Court applied the same line of reasoning when annulling the application of the EU-Morocco Fisheries Partnership Agreement to Western Sahara.3

Yet, not much changed. The EU institutions continued applying both agreements the same way as before the CJEU rulings. In addition, the EU introduced an amendment explicitly extending their application to Western Sahara. The amendment flies in the face of the two rulings by the CJEU, and is problematic in some fundamental respects:

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30/06/2021

European Parliament Committee on Petitions approves petition calling for companies operating in the Occupied Territories not to be contracted by the EU and its member states


 

Spanish Committee for Solidarity with the Arab Cause (CSCA), 29/6/2021 

Translated by Fausto Giudice

The European Parliament  Committee on Petitions, at the proposal of the CSCA, approves the petition and refers it to the Foreign Affairs and Human Rights Committees of the same Parliament for discussion.

The European Parliament is asked to ensure that companies operating in the Occupied Territories are not contracted by the EU and its Member States.

The Committee for Solidarity with the Arab Cause presented last February a petition to the European Parliament to sanction companies operating in the Occupied Territories of Palestine and Western Sahara and to consider them ineligible for public tenders and other possible aid to the European Union and member states.

06/06/2021

Business as usual : The Western Sahara conundrum

Sebastián Ruiz-Cabrera, El Salto, april 2021

Translated by Andy Barton

An investigative series exploring the different aspects that contribute to maintaining the state of emergency in the occupied territories of Western Sahara. This series was made possible by the Basque NGO MUNDUBAT and funding from the Madrid City Council.

1-Destroying life
2-Gone with the wind
3-The desert scrub
4-The indomitable sea