"In a Muslim-majority region where women are often marginalized from politics, women have taken an unusually prominent role in Western Sahara’s independence movement." In Western Sahara, traditional gender roles and nomadic roots have freed Sahrawi women to push for independence from Morocco: wapo.st/1cbeqF8 Morocco has occupied the Western Sahara since 1975, with Moroccan settlers outnumbering remaining indigenous Sahrawis by a ratio of 3:1. Despite this strategic disadvantage, recent weeks have seen some of the largest protests in the history of the occupation. A nonviolent march in May drew over 1,000, including hundreds of women; activists described the protest as the largest in the history of the independence movement: bit.ly/18PNVo9 - by Stephen Zunes Aminatou Haidar, known as the "Sahrawi Gandhi" for her nonviolent protests, heads CODESA, the Collective of Sahrawi Human Rights Defenders. Having been subject to forced disappearance, torture and expulsion, Haidar undertook a hunger strike in 2009 that attracted significant international support for the Sahrawi independence movement: aje.me/13sNIPT UN General Assembly resolution 1514 reads, "All peoples have the right to self-determination": bit.ly/11sKfTT The General Assembly cites the inalienable right to self-determination as "the most effective way the global community could guarantee protection of fundamental freedoms": bit.ly/13sNKHz Pictured: Djimi Elghalia, 48, vice president of the Saharawi Association of Victims of Grave Human Rights Violations Committed by the Moroccan State (ASVDH), near El Aaiún city, in Moroccan controlled Western Sahara. Elghalia spent four years in prison for trying to organize a demonstration for independence in 1987. She was subjected to physical and psychological torture.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 21:29:27 +0000
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