A Sahrawi-Australian woman has called for more recognition of her people's struggle for independence in the Western Sahara. The disputed territory is known as the last African colonial state yet to achieve independence and has been under an illegal Moroccan military occupation since 1975. Despite promises of self-determination from the international community, the future of the Sahrawi people remains unclear.
Her people, native to the disputed Western Sahara region, have been living under an illegal military occupation by Morocco since 1975. Dr Randi Irwin, a lecturer at the University of Newcastle has conducted anthropological research with Sahrawi refugees in the refugee camps and can attest to the harsh conditions there.
Kamal Fadel is the Australia and New Zealand Representative for the Polisario Front, which is now recognised as the legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people by the United Nations."The invasion was brutal, the occupation was brutal and people faced the Moroccan army coming in and using force to occupy the territory, but bombarding the Sahara with prohibited napalm and cluster bombs.
Tracey Cameron, a Gamilaraay language teacher at the University of Sydney, says she sees direct parallels between the struggles of her people and those native to the Western Sahara. However, the Kingdom of Morocco recognises the entire region as its Southern Provinces or the Moroccan Sahara and its representatives have often branded the Polisario as a terrorist organisation, despite their UN recognition.
Meanwhile, claims of human rights abuses and an alleged extreme crackdown on dissident media by Moroccan forces in the Western Sahara have been widely documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Reporters Without Borders among others. He says he has been assaulted, dismissed from his former job as a teacher and harassed with repeated death threats due to his work."And I'm lucky because yes, I was really dismissed from my job and I was intimidated but my colleague is still behind bars. So could you imagine, seven of my colleagues are behind bars for 14 years, six years in a solitary confinement just because they were journalists, they carry the cameras, they try to report on the situation there.
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