I attended the Finnish Social Forum (FSF) screening of Gdeim Izik documentary. The Finnish Social Forum is an annual gathering of Finnish NGO’s, professionals, researchers and activists. It is also the local branch of the World Social Forum. The event is mainly funded by the Finnish Foreign Ministry. FSF attracts a vast and varied crowd and this year was no exception. On my walk to the fourth floor where the documentary was to be shown, I had met several friends and bought three books from a discount basket.

The room was half full when I arrived. Inside there were people I already knew, but also a lot of new faces. Some of the Social Forum events gather dozens of people, and I was aware that the Western Sahara issue would not be one of those big ones where it is hard to find a seat. So, I was very pleased to see so many people attending. The documentary was released by the human rights organization Sahara Thawra

More people should see the film. It brings to light at least two major issues connected with the conflict: the conflict is mainly ignored by the world and there is very little independent monitoring of human rights.

Now, the strength of the film is in its weakness. The documentary depicts only a partial truth. It only shows what it can show. There was no independent reporting because Morocco made sure no reporters were around. Amazingly, reporters who tried to fly from Spain were not let in to the planes heading for Morocco. The UN Minurso operation was nowhere to be seen. All we got from Gdeim Izik is this documentary and the parts that were filmed in the camp were shot by amateurs who just happened to have a camera. This is not a work of journalism but it is a statement. It is easy to dismiss as propaganda but in doing so we fail to see the other side: The Sahrawi side, the side, we seldom see.

I must admit that I had very little knowledge of the documentary beforehand. I knew it was about Gdeim Izik, the 2010 Saharawi protest camp in the occupied Western Sahara and that it was brutally dismantled by the Moroccan military and secret police. It has been claimed by Noam Chomsky that what happened in Gdeim Izik was the “first spark” of the Arabic Spring.

April 28, 2012 By Malainin Lakhal

The Security Council’s resolution 2044 adopted Tuesday 24 of April 2012 is an exact duplicate of the previous resolution 1979 adopted last year, with the only difference in mentioning few events that took place after the adoption of the last one, especially the organization of a seminar in Madera and reported progress in the implementation of the family visit exchange programme..etc.

The resolution, like the previous one, superficially touched the main question of current debate and concern: The serious human rights violations by Morocco in Western Sahara. Worse, the Security Council member states simply used the same paragraph used in last year’s resolution without changing a coma, which means that they opted for maintaining the status quo, and want to give Morocco another opportunity to keep up with what it is already doing: violating Saharawi people’s civil, political, social and economic rights with the benediction and protection of France.

South Africa, on behalf of African countries, has rightly denounced the UN Security Council’s attitude, which was influenced by the position of France and the fact that Morocco is a member of the Council this year.

South African Ambassador, Baso Sangqu, said after the adoption of the new resolution that “it is an anomaly that MINURSO is one of the few UN (peacekeeping missions) that does not have a human rights mandate,” Sangqu said. “This double standard creates an impression that the Security Council does not give priority to the human rights of the people of Western Sahara.”

WASHINGTON DC, April 20 -- The US is pushing for full freedom of movement for UN observers in Syria, but was apparently beaten to the initial punch by a resolution circulated to Security Council members by Russia on Friday morning.

Inner City Press went to the US State Department briefing and asked spokesperson Victoria Nuland about the Russian resolution, and to compare it on the issue of freedom of movement to a resolution the US is prepared to vote for which accepts surveillance of the UN Mission in Western Sahara by the Moroccan government.

Nuland replied that "I understood from my colleagues in New York, at the US Mission to the UN, that we are working off a single draft. I'm going to send you up to them."

It's time the US and the UN stopped looking the other way while the west's ally Morocco occupies and abuses the Sarahawis

The Arab Spring began in the Western Sahara. In late 2010, the indigenous Saharawi population of this territory demonstrated against the occupying Moroccan authorities. Their demonstrations were violently put down. Eleven Saharawis were killed.

But this is one part of the Arab Spring that western governments don't want to talk about. And their silence, and the UN's complicity in it, is why that repression continues, and a terrible injustice is perpetuated.

Western Sahara was invaded by Morocco in 1975. Its indigenous population was, in contemporary parlance, ethnically cleansed. Around 150,000 of those driven out remain in isolated refugee camps in the Algerian Sahara: in tents, in the middle of the desert (I have been there; it is grim). The Saharawis, fought back in a guerrilla war that lasted until a ceasefire in 1991. The centerpiece of that ceasefire, repeatedly endorsed by the UN and international community, was that there would be a referendum for the people of Western Sahara to decide the future of the territory, and in particular whether it would be a independent state.