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'Arab Spring started in Western Sahara'
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- Created on Monday, 18 June 2012 00:00
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'Arab Spring started in Western Sahara'
In the wake of the ongoing unrest across the Arab world, voices from the forgotten Western Sahara conflict claim their role in the so-called Arab Spring. DW talked to a Western Sahara independence activist.
Sidi Ahmed Talmidi was one of the nine-member group responsible for the negotiations with the Moroccan government during the events in Gdeim Izik camp in Western Sahara in October 2010 (Camp established to protest against ongoing discrimination, poverty and human rights abuses, some protesters also demanded independence for Western Sahara. The protests were initially peaceful, but turned violent following clashes between civilians and security forces - the ed.). Seven members of the original group are in prison and have recently started a hunger strike while they await trial. DW spoke to Talmidi, one of those still free, at the Sahrawi refugee camp in Western Algeria.
{sidebar id=11 align=right}DW: What is the current situation in Western Sahara under Moroccan control?
Sidi Ahmed Talmidi: Morocco has turned the area into a massive prison. Nobody feels safe, not even inside their houses. People are constantly harassed, dragged out from home in the middle of the night and either taken to prison or even "disappeared." Their corpses are often found brutally mutilated in the middle of the street. The last case happened four days ago when the body of a man called Hamdi Tarfany was found chopped into pieces in Laayoune, the administrative capital of the region.
It's been like this since former colonial power Spain pulled out in 1975 and left us in the hands of the Moroccans who invaded our land. Rabat claims that we have the same living standards as in the rest of Morocco, and that we also enjoy a democratic system but that's far from being true. These violations have been recognized by almost everybody, even the UN recognizes the Polisario Front (Sahrawi rebel national liberation movement - the ed.) as the legitimate representative of the Western Sahara people.
Morocco and the Polisario Front fought a war over the territory for 16 years until a UN-brokered cease-fire took effect in 1991. What have you achieved in those 21 years?
We laid down our weapons because we were promised a referendum. The MINURSO, the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, produced a census but Morocco has managed to block the lists until today. Basically, we have achieved absolutely nothing. Most of our people have turned into refugees in the middle of the Algerian desert - between 200,000 and 275,000 depending on the source - and we are struggling to survive. On the other hand, Rabat has obtained massive benefits in these two decades. They are exploiting our mineral and fishing resources thanks to France's complicity and the UN inaction. The MINURSO staff are just getting paid by the UN to stay in a comfortable scenario for them. They have no mechanisms to monitor human rights in the area mainly due to the massive hurdle the French UN veto poses.
You were one the members of the negotiation group during the events in Gdeim Izik camp in October 2010. How do you remember those days?
On October 9 we set up a camp around 12 kilometers outside Laayoun because we wanted to conduct a peaceful demonstration and avoid frictions with the Moroccan settlers downtown. There were nine of us in the negotiations group. We wanted to remind the world that we have been a Moroccan colony for over 35 years so people would walk all the way to where we stayed to join us. After a month we were around 30,000 Sahrawis gathering at the camp.
We were asking for our most basic rights and protesting against the Moroccan government and monarchy. We have nothing against the Moroccan people, in fact, many of them are also facing very dire conditions under Rabat's rule. On November 8, Moroccan police and special forces raided the camp in the most brutal way. There are no words to describe what we all witnessed that day; it's hard to believe such things can happen in the 21st century. The day before the raid, the government publicly accused eight of us of kidnapping all those gathering at the camp. How could we possibly hold thousands captive?
Morocco claims that 18 policemen died during the event but no Sahrawis whatsoever. The Polisario Front puts the Sahrawi death toll at 38 with hundreds more injured. What's your stance?
I could give you a lot of names of protesters killed by the Moroccan police. Fourteen-year-old Nagam Gareh was killed inside a car that was carrying supplies for the protesters; Brahimd Daudi and Babi el Gargar were among those killed in the shooting… Nonetheless, it's impossible to quantify the dead and injured as our people were even denied medical assistance in the hospitals. Besides, I have no clues on the whereabouts of many friends. A lot of people disappeared after the events.
Disinformation on our conflict is endemic so it came as no surprise when the media was denied access to Gdeim Izik. Even Al Jazeera was immediately expelled from Morocco after they started talking about the issue. We could say that the Arab Spring started in Morocco-controlled Western Sahara, and not in Tunisia. If we had achieved just a tiny percentage of the attention Tunisia or Egypt would get two months later, the political scenario might be significantly different today.
How can this conflict be unblocked?
The only hope for the Sahrawis is to get the UN to recognize that Morocco does not want to take any further step toward the peace plan. Time is on Morocco's side so international pressure is mandatory to force Rabat to sit down and negotiate. However, Morocco's refusal would mean to go back to war. Today I think that the only solution for Western Sahara is full independence, and not any sort of autonomy as Rabat has suggested. The latter would mean to continue under their occupation, hence being treated like animals. The majority of our people live like refugees in the middle of the desert because they cannot go back home. We are exhausted and we cannot cope with this situation any longer.
Interview: Karlos Zurutuza, Rabuni refugee camp, western Algeria Editor: Rob Mudge
Source: Deutsche Welle
No commentsSaudi Arabian women risk arrest as they defy ban on driving
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- Created on Sunday, 17 June 2012 00:00
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17 June 2012
Saudi Arabian women risk arrest as they defy ban on driving
Women in Saudi Arabia have been arrested and jailed for defying a ban on driving. Now they want men to join them in the passenger seat as they get behind the wheel
Tracy McVeigh
In the past year, they have lost jobs, friends, social standing, reputations and they have been imprisoned, shunned and – in a few cases – even received death threats.
{sidebar id=11 align=right}But women in Saudi Arabia were this weekend preparing once again to risk arrest and even flogging to drive cars in defiance of the country's ban.
It was on 17 June last year that about 100 women took part in the first demonstration organised by underground civil disobedience campaigns Women2Drive and I Will Drive My Own Car.
Many were arrested and jailed. One woman's sentence of 10 lashes was revoked only after the king intervened. It was the largest mass action since November 1990, when 47 Saudi women were arrested after demonstrating in cars.
On Wednesday, two founders of the movement, Manal al-Sharif, 33, and Najla Hariri, 45, posted an open letter with 600 signatories to King Abdullah, appealing once more for an end to the ban on women driving. The letter said: "Our initiative is not aimed at violating laws."
{sidebar id=10 align=right}On Sunday, women with international driving licences are being urged to flout the ban, but to make sure they do it respectfully, wearing the legally required full Islamic dress and displaying a picture of the king.
Campaigners want men to show their support by travelling in the passenger seat with their wives, mothers, and sisters. They are also asking women to flood the traffic department with driving licence applications.
"We only want to enjoy the right to drive like all women over the world," Hariri told the Observer. "It is really hard for women to take such a stand for the right of driving," she said. "But they will do so because we are really in need of this. So many women are struggling to manage their lives without the right to drive, it is not easy."
It was in May 2011 that Hariri, fed up with having to find a male relative to ferry her and her children around, began to drive herself. After hearing about Hariri driving on Facebook, al-Sharif, a divorced mother, followed suit a few days later, posting a video of herself on YouTube. Al-Sharif was imprisoned by the religious police for more than a week.
This month, Al-Sharif was unable to join four other Arab women in Washington to receive a Vital Voices Leadership Award from an organisation founded by Hillary Clinton.
"The main reason for not being at the awards was [concern] for my family's safety after receiving death threats from insane people," al-Sharif tweeted.
A year after she won recognition for defying the ban, al-Sharif has been forced to resign from her job at Saudi's government-owned Aramco oil company and has lost her housing. Family members have left the country out of fears for their safety.
In the past, King Abdullah, 87, has been quoted as saying "the day will come" when women are allowed to drive. Since last year's campaign, he has promised to allow women to vote and to stand in certain elections by 2015.
But many are sceptical that the king's announcement will herald a move towards equality in a society where discrimination remains entrenched – Saudi Arabia has come under attack for not allowing women athletes to participate in the London Olympics, although the governing Olympic body, the IOC, has refused calls to impose sanctions.
"A lot of westerners don't realise that the king and the government are a lot more progressive than the people," said Saudi writer Lubna Hussein.
"They have to walk a tightrope because the people may want to be modern but they don't want to be western. This year's driving campaign is much more subdued than last year's because of apathy."
She added: "It's no coincidence that during the Arab spring Saudi's neighbours were on fire, but it didn't reach the kingdom. People are comfortable and it makes them numb. With every change, there is often an economic imperative, then change happens fast.
"In Saudi, everything runs smoothly. The drive ban is indefensible, ridiculous, but there is enough of a backlash from the population against the protests to keep it [the ban] in place."
Saudi Arabia's powerful religious body, the Shura Council, has widely publicised an academic study that claims allowing women to drive would lead to higher rates of divorce, prostitution and drug abuse.
Meanwhile, a campaign called My Guardian Knows What is Best for Me – which opposes calls for a more liberal approach to women's rights, including women driving – has been started by a group of Saudi women.
That means the high personal price that is being paid by Hariri, al-Sharif and other women could be for nothing if the apathy Hussein refers to stops women driving in Saudi.
"I am very happy with the attention that we draw to our right to drive and I thank God that so many men are supporting us," said Hariri. "I can't say women are afraid, but of course they are worried – worried equally about the police and about their families.
"I hope that June 17 this year will bring us some good news regarding driving, because society's awareness is so much better now and there is wider understanding that there is an alternative here," she said.
"All of us have the dream that our country can and will become a supportive community for women, where men and women are treated equally."
Source: The Observer UK
Egypt high court ruling calls for dissolution of parliament
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- Created on Thursday, 14 June 2012 00:00
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Egypt high court ruling calls for dissolution of parliament
The Egyptian high court has ruled parliament's composition illegal, paving the way for the body's dissolution. It also overturned a political exclusion law, clearing Mubarak's ex-premier to continue his presidential bid.
Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court on Thursday ordered the country's Islamist-dominated parliament to be dissolved, after ruling that one-third of the seats in the legislative body were invalid due to violations of electoral law.
{sidebar id=11 align=right}Under the prevailing electoral system drawn up by the ruling military council, voters cast their ballots for both parties and independent candidates during the November-January parliamentary elections. The political parties were supposed to hold two-thirds of the parliamentary seats, while the remaining third was reserved for independent candidates.
Despite the rule, political parties ran candidates for the seats reserved for independent candidates. The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and hard-line Salafist al-Nour party won 70 percent of the seats in parliament.
"The constitutional court affirmed in the details of its verdict that the parliamentary elections were not constitutional, and the entire composition of parliament has been illegitimate since its election," the official MENA news agency reported.
Legislative powers are to return to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which has governed Egypt since former president Hosni Mubarak was forced from power.
Senior Muslim Brotherhood member Essam El-Erian told the news agency Reuters that Egypt would enter a "dark tunnel" if the legislature was dissolved.
'Complete coup'
{sidebar id=10 align=right}The court also ruled unconstitutional a political exclusion law for ex-Mubarak regime members. The law could have invalidated the presidential candidacy of former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq.
Shafiq served as Mubarak's prime minister shortly before the former president was forced to resign his post on February 11, 2011, under the pressure of an 18-day popular uprising.
The court ruling clears Shafiq to continue his presidential campaign against his Islamist opponent, Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi. The presidential runoff is scheduled for June 16-17.
"The message of this historic verdict is that the era of political score-settling has ended," Shafiq told cheering supporters in Cairo. "The constitutional court has confirmed my right to participate in the election and reinforced the legitimacy of this election."
Former presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh, an independent Islamist, said that the two court rulings amount to "a complete coup." Fotouh had failed to make it past the first round of the presidential election in May.
"Keeping the military candidate [in the race] and overturning the elected parliament after granting the military police the right to arrest is a complete coup and whoever thinks that millions of youth will let it pass is deluding themselves," Fotouh wrote on his Facebook page.
slk/sad (AP, AFP, Reuters)
Source: Deutsche Welle
Police up to 28 times more likely to stop and search black people – study
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- Created on Friday, 15 June 2012 00:00
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Police up to 28 times more likely to stop and search black people – study
{sidebar id=11 align=right}Human rights watchdog warns of 'racial profiling' as data reveals under 3% of stop and searches leads to an arrest
Vikram Dodd
Police forces are up to 28 times more likely to use stop-and-search powers against black people than white people and may be breaking the law, new research from the official human rights body reveals.
The research from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) looked at police stop powers where officers do not require suspicion of involvement in crime, known as section 60 stops.
The power is used most by the Metropolitan police, which carried out three-quarters of the stops between 2008-11, some 258,000 in total. The next heaviest user was Merseyside with 40,940 stops. Some forces barely use the power.
Thus what the Metropolitan police does can skew the national picture and the data shows a Met officer is about 30 times more likely to use section 60 to stop a black person than a colleague outside London.
{sidebar id=10 align=right}The figures show how often black Britons experience stop and search through section 60 alone, never mind the more commonly used other stop-and-search powers. The EHRC found that in 2008-09, the Met stopped 68 out of every 1,000 black people in its area. This fell to 32.8 per 1,000 by 2010-11. In the rest of England, the figure was down to 1.2 stops per 1,000 black people by 2010-11.
Section 60 of the 1994 Public Order Act was introduced to target originally brought in to tackle people going to illegal raves. It gave police the power, if they feared violence or disorder, to stop and search suspects at a specific time and place.
Most stops in England and Wales require an officer to have "reasonable suspicion" that someone is involved in crime. Section 60 gives an officer maximum discretion and privately police fear its wide-ranging nature and the discretion it gives officers, plus the allegations it is being abused, may lead the courts to strike it down – as happened with section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which had to be reformed after the courts ruled its provision allowing stops without suspicion was too wide-ranging.
{sidebar id=10 align=right}The EHRC notes that while the overall use of section 60 had fallen, excessive use of the power against ethnic minorities, known as racial disproportionality, had continued or even increased. The report found a rise in the percentage of ethnic minorities among those stopped under section 60 between 2008-11, from 51% to 64%.
The commission said the police may be breaching their legal responsibilities, known as the public-sector equality duty: "Any continuing and serious disproportionate use of these powers against ethnic minorities may indicate that the police and Home Office are not complying with their public-sector duties obligations."
The worst rates of racial disproportionality were outside London, according to the EHRC. An officer in the West Midlands was 28 times more likely to stop and search a black person than a white person, in the Greater Manchester force the figure was 21 times, in the Met 11 times, and for British Transport police the figure was 31 times.
Nationally, the EHRC said black people were 37 times more likely to be stopped and searched under section 60 than white people in 2010-11. From 2008 to 2011, the racial disproportionality worsened for the Met and West Midlands forces, while Greater Manchester's disproportionality rate in 2008-9 was 44.9 times greater, which had been halved three years later.
Racial disproportionality meant an officer was 10 times more likely to stop Asian Britons than a white person, with the worst offender being West Midlands police.
The EHRC said through section 60 alone ethnic minorities underwent more than 100,000 excessive searches over 2008-11.
Figures also show that section 60 may be ineffective in fighting crime. According to the report: "In England as a whole, only 2.8% of [section] 60 stops and searches resulted in an arrest in 2008-09 and this decreased to 2.3% in 2010-11. Of these, fewer than one in five arrests were for offensive weapons."
The fact that arrest rates are similar for black and white Britons suggests problems in how police use the power, the EHRC said: "The lack of a significant difference does not prove that black people are not inappropriately targeted."
Simon Woolley, a commissioner at the EHRC, said: "Our research shows black youths are still being disproportionately targeted, and without a clear explanation as to why, many in the community will see this as racial profiling.
"Moreover, police data itself questions the effectiveness of this practice. Some forces are using 200 or 300 stops before arresting an individual over a weapon.
"We are encouraged at least that the Met seek to review the practice with a clear objective that avoids the crude measure of racial profiling and focuses on intelligence-led policing."
The Met is being threatened with a legal challenge over allegations that it discriminates in its use of section 60 stop and search. The commission has previously said it believes the Met's use of section 60 is unlawful.
The Met said it was reforming its use of the power and would aim to make it more focused on tackling violence and reduce the number of stops carried out.
However, in a statement, the Met's deputy commissioner, Craig Mackey, who speaks on stop-and-search issues for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: "Chief officers support the use of stop and search as these powers are critical in our efforts to tackle knife, gun and gang crimes.
"It is important that there is a debate about the effectiveness of these police tactics as we seek to balance the impact of powers, like section 60, on our communities with the need to protect communities from serious crime.
"The police service is firmly committed to working, both locally and nationally, to ensure all sections of society have confidence in the police service and we look forward to working with EHRC to better understand the evidence shown in this report and how it can influence our decision making."
Eight forces did not provide information to the EHRC or claimed exemption under the Freedom of Information Act; they are Avon and Somerset, Cleveland, Essex, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, Sussex, West Yorkshire and Wiltshire.
Source: The Guardian UK
A journalist as France's first lady? Not a good idea
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- Created on Monday, 11 June 2012 00:00
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11 June 2012
A journalist as France's first lady? Not a good idea
Valérie Trierweiler wants to keep working. A laudable ambition, but French journalism is already highly politicised
Agnes Poirier
Is Valérie Trierweiler France's first lady, or France's first journalist? {sidebar id=11 align=right}The question underlines the precarious position the French president's partner has put herself in. A Paris Match political reporter for the past 22 years, she has just announced that she firmly intends to remain an employee of the weekly magazine, with a monthly salary but no desk. Instead of covering politics she will cover culture and arts, writing arts reviews and interviewing artists. She didn't say whether she'll be writing her papers from her desk at the Elysée Palace, or whether her team of four advisers will be checking her copy and making appointments for her.
It is of course hard not to have any sympathy for her. All she wants is to keep working – a very reasonable demand. She says she doesn't want to financially depend on her partner or the taxpayers, and that she has three teenage sons from two previous marriages for whom she has to provide. In a recent interview, which didn't surprise anyone, she said she didn't mind representing France whenever necessary, "being well dressed", "smiling" and "kissing sick children" but that it was not her style to play Mother Teresa 24 hours a day. After all, any woman with her own career and some ambition would be reluctant to be forced to play the traditional first lady role.
Recent political history has provided strong personalities and career women at the side of presidents and prime ministers: Hilary Clinton and Cherie Blair come immediately to mind. But both were lawyers, an activity which allowed them to put on the side any dossiers with a potential conflict of interest. Trierweiler's main problem is that she is a journalist in France, where journalists are often accused of being too close to politicians. As such, insisting on continuing such an activity is a political mistake.
French journalism is by tradition more opinionated than in Britain. We more often than not favour strong and well-articulated views over fact checking and neutral investigation. Every French journalist is, deep down, a pamphleteer. Such overt bias is perhaps less hypocritical than in the UK and the US; after all, the best we can do is to try and be fair, rather than pretend that journalists are unbiased. It remains though that, in France, politics and journalism too often collide.
As Béatrice Vallaeys wrote in Libération this weekend, Trierweiler is not "normal", and as the New York Times stresses, her choice is stirring real unease. I'd add that it is doing President Hollande and France a disservice. Switching from political reporting to cultural reporting doesn't make her decision more palatable: in France, culture and the arts are as political as government and religion. Considering the enormous public subsidies to the arts in France, Trierweiler's reviews could certainly embarrass a culture minister who, in order to please the president, may think it appropriate to help one artist over another. Written in print in Paris Match, Trierweiler's art views would no doubt become prescriptive, even if in an informal way.
What is the alternative for Hollande's partner? She could take a five-year break and write fiction under a pseudonym. There is probably a publisher in France who would be willing to sign her a three-book deal.
Source: The Guardian UK