What happened?

Moroccan army fort in Guerguerat

During my embarrassing absence, a lot of Western Sahara-related things happened:

• In December, Morocco began reinforcing its position on the Berm, a violation of the ceasefire. Polisario complained to the UN.
  
• Human Rights Watch released its annual Western Sahara report. The report focuses on the abuses the Moroccan government inflicts on pro-independence Sahrawis. Here's a description of the torture of a Sahrawi activist named Asfari:

  After two, two and-a-half-hours, [the police] said, “Let’s try something else.” While I was still seated, they lifted my feet onto a second chair in front of me and hit the soles of my feet with what felt like hard plastic batons, for two, three minutes…One of them burned me with cigarettes on my wrists.

• Two Sahrawi students, Mustapha Abd Daiem and Laktif el-Houssin, were crushed by a bus in a sit-in at a Marrakesh bus stop.
  

That last one is the one I'm saddest about effectively ignoring. It's a huge story, and the kind that shows how unpleasant life in Morocco can get if you're on the government's bad side. Interestingly, the incident also shows how good the Western Sahara conflict is, compared to other conflicts. An unjust death in DR Congo or Palestine would garner much less attention, considering the violence in those areas.

I know as well as anyone that a lot of stories on blogs are treated like a big deal, but then . If you want more coverage of one of these events or one I didn't name, say so in the comments. I'll do follow up reporting, and maybe post an interview with someone involved. It'll be a way to make up for the coverage these issues missed when I stopped blogging.

Photo from Flickr user Zongo769 used under a Creative Commons license.

Moroccan soldiers attack Sahrawi and Moroccan students in Marrakesh

It seems something unites previously-fractious Sahrawi and Moroccan students at Marrakesh University: they're both not jackboot thugs, and they get repressed by the same. On the 17th of May Moroccan police stormed the campus, and while we're just getting the images recently, one thing's clear: it was bad.

Demonstrations started after 19 Moroccans got food poisoning. It seems as though the Sahrawis used student anger to call for self-determination. Police officers uninterested in compromise and negotiation responded, and threw 2 Sahrawis and 1 Moroccan out of windows and shot tear gas at other students (video of the tear gas attack's aftermath).

The Norwegian Support Committee has several other videos shot by Rabab Amidane before, during, and after the assault on campus. I was affected by this one, showing all the university rooms ransacked by Moroccan police. It's sad to see these rooms touched by the hand of a Moroccan elite afraid of its own sons and daughters.



This anti-student bias isn't limited to the police: according one of the videos, some in Marrakesh are refusing to rent to the rebellious students, leaving them to sleep on the streets or in internet cafes.

I recently read Joseph Califano's The Student Revolution, a book about unrest at universities across the world in 1968. One of Califano's themes is that poor university conditions allowed small radical groups of students to win support from the student mainstream for their off-campus politics. Maybe the same thing will happen in Morocco, as Sahrawis are able to mix with politically-active Moroccans on student issues.

Update: the Moroccan student isn't dead, fortunately. I'm sorry for the mistake.

Sahrawi students under attack in Marrakesh

The irrepressible Rabab Amidane, whose brother El Ouali is serving time in a Moroccan jail for his independence work, has two videos of harassment of Sahrawi students at Marrakesh University. This month Sahrawi students have been assaulted for their activism on behalf of self-determination by roving gangs, according to CODESA.



In the first video, Rabab interviews some Sahrawi students who have moved into a central building to protect themselves from further attacks. Perversely, seeing them eat in this redoubt made me really want some Sahrawi food.

It looks like the younger generation has learned human rights lessons well from --in the video, a group of students record who was attacked and how for future complaints. They'll need the information, because it looks like the attacks have been serious. Assaulted student Letif Lahbib just lies on a stretcher moaning in the video, while his friends outside demonstrate by waving his bloody shirt.

In the second video, Sahrawis angry at the attacks march through the university. People walking by seemed pretty blase about the march, which I take to be a good sign. All the best to those in Marrakesh.