Gaby Alamin is a Sahrawi-Australian woman living in Melbourne.
She says most Australians have no idea about the place she grew up.
While she juggles being a mother, a university student and an educator, she also makes time to advocate on behalf of her family and her people who have been fighting for independence for generations in northwestern Africa.
“Whenever I say I’m from Western Sahara or I was born in a refugee camp, people are like, ‘Oh, where is that?’
“I take that opportunity to explain to them about the struggle of my people and our struggle for self-determination.”
While she juggles being a mother, a university student and an educator, Alamin also makes time to advocate on behalf of her family and her people who have been fighting for independence for generations in northwestern Africa. Source: Supplied
However, her presence in Australia is unique.
“What I understand is that I’m the only Sahrawi woman in Australia — I think because of the geographical location, the distance between Australia and North Africa. So it’s very hard for us and for my people to migrate to Australia.”
Her people, native to the disputed Western Sahara region, have been living under Moroccan military occupation since 1975.
Western Sahara’s struggle for independence
The disputed territory is known as the last African colonial state yet to achieve independence.
Despite the United Nations recognising their right to self-determination and promising a referendum to finally decolonise the region in 1991, the Sahrawi people are still waiting for the chance to vote for either independence or integration with Morocco.
Alamin’s parents fled amid the violence in 1975 and she was born in a refugee camp in neighbouring Algeria, where about 165,000 Sahrawis reside in hopes of one day returning to their homeland.
“In the refugee camps where I was born and raised, life there is really difficult, and the conditions are quite harsh. It’s the desert. Sometimes the temperature reaches 50 degrees.
What I understand is that I’m the only Sahrawi woman in Australia — I think because of the geographical location, the distance between Australia and North Africa. So it’s very hard for us and for my people to migrate to Australia.
But she said there were some positive aspects to this harsh environment.
“One of the things that is amazing about the camps: we have a great sense of community. People are always uplifting and they always have a hope to go back to their home country, to Western Sahara, and to have a better future.”
Randi Irwin, a lecturer at the University of Newcastle who has conducted anthropological research with Sahrawi refugees in the refugee camps, can attest to the harsh conditions there.
“The refugee camps are in the hottest part of the Sahara Desert, known as the Hamada of the Sahara. But in the wake of that, Saharawis have found ways to make life in the desert more livable.
“So you have some Sahrawi who are trying to come up with alternative housing formations and they’re really trying to prepare in the best way that they can for the referendum and for possible decolonisation.”
The Western Sahara was colonised by Spain as the Spanish Sahara between 1884 and 1976.
The Polisario Front
A Sahrawi resistance movement known as the Polisario Front was born in 1973 to fight against the Spanish colonisers in what became the beginning of a campaign for independence that has lasted over 50 years.
The Sahrawi people were preparing to transition into an independent state from Spanish control when their neighbours Morocco and Mauritania decided to claim the region for themselves, citing historical ties to the land.
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.
He says the early days of this long and bitter war were incredibly difficult for the local people.
“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.
“And then, when they occupy the territory, all those people who have someone in the Polisario or who have sympathies with the Polisario were arrested, detained, disappeared, of course, in secret detention centres inside Morocco.”
Morocco formally denied that any Sahrawi former combatants remained in detention.
The invasion and de facto annexation of Western Sahara by Morocco and Mauritania in the 1970s was condemned by the international community as a breach of international law and a bypassing of an International Court of Justice advisory opinion on Western Sahara.
This advisory opinion rejected
, saying the land did indeed belong to the Sahrawi people despite their nomadic existence prior to Spain’s colonisation.
This became one of the key legal precedents for
which established native title in Australia, as it was cited throughout the case and referenced by High Court justice Gerard Brennan.
While Mauritania left the Western Sahara in 1979 after years of war, Morocco now controls three-fourths of the region, with the Polisario Front’s Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic controlling 20 to 25 per cent.
Morocco has also transferred hundreds of thousands of settlers into the occupied region in what is considered a direct violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
However, 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.
Alex Radojev, honorary consul to New South Wales for Morocco, said the Polisario Front are guilty of human rights abuses.
“I think Polisario are regarded by most people in the Western Sahara region as close to terrorists.”
He said Morocco is willing to offer a level of autonomy to the occupied Western Sahara but it is the position of King Mohammed VI that Moroccan sovereignty over the territories is non-negotiable.
The Polisario Front claims they have never targeted civilians and their war against Moroccan military forces is legitimate and founded upon occupied people’s right to resist their occupiers.
They also responded to claims they had been training child soldiers in refugee camps, calling them “baseless allegations” that have not been supported by international agencies such as the United Nations and the European Union that operate within the camps.
Claims of human rights abuses
Meanwhile, claims of human rights abuses and an alleged extreme crackdown on dissident media by Moroccan forces in the occupied Western Sahara have been widely documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Reporters Without Borders among others.
Evidence of these alleged abuses have been made available by independent local media such as Équipe Media.
Équipe co-founder Mohamed Mayara says attacks on him and his fellow journalists are part of a strategy to scare people from speaking out and exposing alleged crimes.
“We always put ourself in danger. The consequences is very severe. We are working in direct contact with the occupiers and, of course, Morocco criminalises the work we are doing in Western Sahara, so therefore we can count more than seven journalists that have been arrested and condemned with false charges in order to terrify others.”
He said he has been assaulted, dismissed from his former job as a teacher and harassed with repeated death threats due to his work.
Équipe co-founder Mohamed Mayara says attacks on him and his fellow journalists are part of a strategy to scare people from speaking out and exposing alleged crimes. Source: Supplied
Still, he considers himself lucky.
“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.”
Moroccos claims the Polisario are violating human rights in some instances and has in the past claimed Algeria is responsible for crimes on its territory.
Meanwhile, after studying hard in the refugee camps in Algeria, Gaby Alamin got a scholarship to study in Costa Rica when she was 15 and from there moved to Australia eight years ago in her early 20s.
While she still tries to visit her family in the refugee camps every couple of years, she says she’s been so grateful to have found a better life for her and her son in Australia.
While the status of the long-promised UN referendum for self-determination of the Sahrawi people remains unclear, Alamin and her people still believe they will be able to choose their own destiny in the years to come.
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