ANARCHIST SPEECH AT THE BERLIN RALLY FOR FREE WESTERN SAHARA, 7 NOVEMBER ~ Anon ~ Some days exist to remind us of what we continually live through. The Green March occurred on November 6, but it was enabled by decades of colonial occupation. On November 6, 1975, the Green March, openly promoted by the Moroccan monarchy and quietly supported by European governments, particularly the Spanish state, unfolded. This event paved the way for a new phase in the colonial history of the region. The colonial occupation of Western Sahara by Moroccan forces resulted in the division of a people, with communities and friendships torn apart and violated at the most intimate levels of their existence. Languages were prohibited, customs criminalised, initially through extermination and forced displacement into the desert, followed by a local plan for assimilation and unification under a single national identity: in this case, Moroccan. But this is not a unique case; this is history repeating itself. It is crucial to acknowledge that the infrastructure and military conditions were already established because this territory had been under Spanish colonial dominance for decades. And it is particularly important to remember that although the Spanish state tries to propagate the fiction of a peaceful coexistence between Spanish colonisers and Saharawis, colonialism can never be pacific. Let us not forget that the Spanish state occupied the Sahara for geopolitical interests, to maintain control over the Canary Islands, which remain a Spanish colony today, absurdly treated as European territory despite their location off the African coast. The Canary Islands were the first colonised territory and a necessary base for the colonisation of Abya Yala. In summary, the narrative of peaceful coexistence between Spanish colonisers and the Saharawi people is not just a lie regarding that territory’s history; it stands as a falsehood because the colonisation of the Sahara happened over the blood of millions of people in Abya Yala and Canary Islands. Even though the Spanish crown, and later the Spanish state, have been intrinsically linked to colonialism, they have never operated alone. Colonial power is always a convergence of various actors, both state and private. However, today in a world of seemingly transnational capitalist interest, the role of nation states in the perpetuation of colonial relationships of power is obscured. Especially the role of the german state, which has always been a colonial force. The colonial policies of the Deutsches Reich were the inspiration and breeding ground for National Socialism. National Socialism became the foundation of the current German state with its extractivist, patriarchal, and racist policies. German repressive colonial tactics have been inspiration to other states throughout history. Let us not forget all the SS soldiers who continued their careers in the Global South, whether in NATO or fighting in Vietnam as part of the French Foreign Legion, just to name some examples. It is no coincidence that the alliance between Morocco, Israel, and Germany works so effectively. Germany’s interest in both providing and receiving military training from these two forces is significant. As people living in the territory claimed by the german state, we cannot view this situation as distant because we are part of it; it permeates our daily lives. The extreme militarisation of our society, the local war against migration, and the normalised police violence against feminist and anti-colonial movements show, that we must continue to walk opposing paths, those we have been tracing for a long time in search of different worlds. What does a country like Germany fear in the face of the feminist alliance? What does a monarchy like Morocco fear from women’s self-organisation in the streets? What we propose is not a reform; it is the creation of new worlds. What we suggest has no place and will never find space in their institutions. Anticolonial feminism comes to destroy all the pillars of our society. It confronts the Catholic Church and its evangelical counterparts with their developmentalist discourse on reproduction. We challenge the states and their constructs of private and public. We put our bodies—contested territory for over 500 years—on display, making others uncomfortable. Predictably, so dangerous. Anticolonial feminism comes to shout in the face of those who have historically silenced us: not one less! With the certainty that punitive measures are not the way, we will continue to chip away at the bars of every prison until all our sisters are free. We will keep fighting to laugh, to celebrate, to feel pleasure. Calling for a demonstration on the 6th of November has a symbolic meaning, being on the streets every day is what we should aim for. We do not forget any of the forcefully disappeared, Ni olvido ni perdon! Presentes ahora y siempre! We greet all people in the occupied territories from West Sahara to 48 and Gaza. From Abya Yala to Sudan and Congo. For autonomy, for anarchy, Sahara libre y feminista! PS. for all this white-washed anarchist still discussing the question of national flags, your time is over cuties, grow up and take a stand! Meet you on the streets, where we can actually be anarchic! The post “Anticolonial feminism comes to destroy all the pillars of our society” appeared first on Freedom News.

UNDER MOROCCAN OCCUPATION, RENEWABLES PROJECTS ARE BEING USED TO REINFORCE DOMINANCE ~ Tommaso Marconi ~ While renewable energy is seen as part of the solution to many environmental issues we are facing, it is also used as a pretext by capitalist lobbies and occupying states to overcome territorial sovereignty and implement privatisation. The case of Western Sahara is clear: two-thirds of the territory has been occupied by the Moroccan army since 1975, and now Morocco’s main tool to continue the occupation has become the green transition. The invasion of the former Spanish colonial territories started in November 1975. The Moroccan army used napalm and a devastating amount of violence to gain those territories and forced thousands of Saharawi to flee and become refugees in Algeria and then Europe. In February 1976 the Saharawi liberation movement Frente Polisario declared an independent Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic.  (SADR); in the same month the King of Morocco signed a treaty with Spain and Mauritania where they divided the territory. When Mauritania retreated its army, Morocco entered the zone and occupied it to control the coast until Guerguerat, just north of the Mauritanian border.  In the 1980s, the Moroccan army started building a huge sand wall (the Berm) to stabilise the frontline with the area in which Frente Polisario was active. Today, that wall is the longest in the world, measuring over 2,700 km and surrounded by mined zones. To meet the enormous cost of maintaining and defending the wall, the Kingdom of Morocco exploits and exports Saharawi resources — fish and phosphates. CORRUPTION Various rulings by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) have resulted in difficulties for European corporations to enter the trade in Saharawi resources. A treaty on free trade of fish and sand with European corporations was ruled illegal by the European Court in 2015; for the UK that meant the total exit of British enterprises from Western Sahara until 2021. In response, Morocco has resorted to more aggressive diplomacy in Europe and other international spaces.   In November 2022 a huge scandal was disclosed in the European parliament: the Qatargate (also known as Moroccogate). It was proven that Moroccan agents had been corrupting Members of European Parliament (MEP) using an Italian politician, Antonio Panzeri, as a middleman. Some results that Morocco gained from this strategy were: the denial of the Sakharov human rights prize to two Saharawi activists; the passing of resolutions against Algeria, which has been favouring Polisario and hosting Saharawi refugees; the modification of a European report about violence and human rights to erase the Moroccan cases; and an attempt to reverse the rulings against a fishing treaty, which banned EU companies from fishing off the Laayoune shores.  The Abraham Accords signed in 2020 between the USA, Israel, Bahrain, the UAE and Morocco, included complicit recognition of the occupations of Palestine by Israel and Western Sahara by Morocco. Israel has since increased its trade with Morocco, including new drones Morocco has used in the war against Frente Polisario. Crops at Growing Hope cooperative farm in Laayoune refugee camp. Photo: Darya Rustamova The Moroccan army and its colonial administration of Western Sahara’s occupied territories are actively hiding information and data about the exploitation of natural resources. The Western Sahara Resources Watch monitors the exploitation and produces detailed reports on it, but we do not actually know the size of resources that are being extracted and seized by Morocco and sold off in the global market. The biggest phosphate mine in Western Sahara is the Phosboucraa, but Moroccan institutions do not publish the amount of phosphate extracted there. Instead, they greatly publicise the renewable energy used for extracting and processing the phosphates. The Kingdom’s priority in its green transition is to provide stable energy to its biggest asset, the phosphate mining industry. Thus, the mine receives 90% of the electricity consumption from solar and wind power plants.   RENEWABLE ENERGY Since 2017, the Moroccan Kingdom has rapidly been investing in the green energy sector, after realising that it lacks fossil fuel reserves, and it needs more energy. At international meetings of states who are parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, it craftily depicted itself as the most proactive country in renewables in Africa: Marrakech hosted two such meetings, lately in 2017. Since then, renewable energy projects have multiplied, and many more renewable energy power plants have been built. Morocco exploits land, air and sea in Western Sahara despite having no sovereignty over it. Western Sahara is connected to the Moroccan grid via the capital Laayoune. A new 400kV power connection is planned between Laayoune and Dakhla, and to Mauritania.  Through this power-line, Morocco plans to export renewable energy to West Africa. Exports to the EU will occur via existing and planned submarine connections with Spain, Portugal and with the UK. The UK project would see a 3.6GW submarine high-voltage direct current interconnector between the UK and the Occupied Territories, which would generate energy to meet 6% of the UK’s demand. All these plans are particularly focused on cutting the energy trade of Morocco’s first competitor and geopolitical enemy in the Mediterranean region, Algeria. Morocco’s strategy underlines the place of energy in realising the Kingdom’s diplomatic efforts in securing support for its occupation in traditionally pro-Saharawi independence, pro-Polisario, sub-Saharan Africa (especially Nigeria). The final purpose of this strategy is to strengthen economic relations with African countries in return for recognition of its illegal occupation.  The implications for the Saharawi right to self-determination are huge. These planned energy exports would make the European and West African energy markets partially dependent on energy generated in occupied Western Sahara. The Saharawi people are 500,000: around 30-40,000 live under the Moroccan military occupation and the rest live in the Tindouf refugee camp (the capital of the exiled SADR) in Algeria and some dozen thousands are refugees in Europe. One form of oppression by the Moroccan army against the Saharawi remaining in the Occupied Territories, is by threatening to cut off the electricity in the neighbourhood of Laayoune where most Saharawi live, to make it impossible for them to record violence against the community.  Morocco is quite successful in attracting international cooperation projects in the field of renewable energy. The EU sees the country as a supposedly reliable partner in North Africa, not least because of its alleged role in the fight against international terrorism and in insulating the EU from migratory movements. Demonstration at the Berm wall, 2014. Photo: Darya Rustamova There are hundreds of foreign businesses involved in the exploitation of occupied Western Sahara’s natural resources. One of the most active is Siemens Gamesa, because it is involved in all wind power fields in occupied Western Sahara. Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (Siemens Gamesa) is the result of a merger, in 2017, of the Spanish Gamesa Corporación Tecnológica and Grupo Auxiliar Metalúrgico, inc. in 1976, and the German Siemens Wind Power, their “green” division. The renewable energy company develops, produces, installs and maintains onshore and offshore wind turbines in more than 90 countries; but the most critical is its participation in 5 wind farms in the Occupied Territories, one of which provides 99% of the energy required to operate the phosphate extraction and export mine of Phosboucraa.  The European Union continues to promote the sector and create alliances with Siemens Gamesa regardless of being aware that the company operates in occupied territory and therefore violating international law. According to the position of the German government, as well as that of the European Union and the United Nations, the situation in occupied Western Sahara is not resolved. Siemens Gamesa’s actions in the occupied territory, like those of other companies, contribute to the consolidation of the Moroccan occupation of the territory. Business activity in the occupied Saharawi territory has been addressed by multiple UN resolutions on the right to self-determination of occupied Western Sahara and the right of its citizens to dispose of its resources.  On the ground, it is almost exclusively an outside elite that benefits from the projects: the operator of the energy parks in Western Sahara and direct business partner of Siemens Energy and ENEL is the company Nareva (owned by the king). The Saharawi themselves have no access to projects on their legitimate territory, especially those living in refugee camps in Algeria since they fled the Moroccan invasion. Instead, Saharawi who continue to live under occupation in Western Sahara face massive human rights violations by the occupying power.  Saharawi living in the occupied territory are aware that energy infrastructure—its ownership, its management, its reach, the terms of its access, the political and diplomatic work it does—mediates the power of the Moroccan occupation and its corporate partners. The Moroccan occupation enters, and shapes the possibilities of, daily life in the Saharawi home through (the lack of) electricity cables. Saharawi understand power cuts as a method through which the occupying regime punishes them as a community, fosters ignorance of Moroccan military manoeuvres, combats celebrations of Saharawi national identity, enforces a media blockade so that news from Western Sahara does not reach “the outside world” and creates regular dangers in their family home. They also acknowledge that renewables are not the problem per se but are a tool for the colonialist kingdom to advance the colonisation in a new form and with news legitimisations from foreign countries. The new projects are being built so fast that the local opposition to them is ineffective. The Saharawi decolonial struggle is deeper, the final goal is liberation and self-determination; they acknowledge that the renewable power plants will be good when managed for the goodwill of the Saharawi in a free SADR. As a fisherman from Laayoune said in an interview about the offshore windmills: “They do not represent anything but a scene of the wind of your land being illegally exploited by the invaders with no benefits for the people”.  People interviewed: Khaled, activist of Juventud Activa Saharaui, El Machi, Saharawi activist, Ahmedna, activist of Juventud Activa Saharaui, former member of Red Ecosocial Saharaui, Youssef, local Saharawi from Laayoune, Ayoub, youth activist from Laayoune injured by police, Khattab, Saharawi journalist (interviewed with Ayoub), Asria Mohamed, Saharawi podcaster based in Sweden. The post Green colonialism in Western Sahara appeared first on Freedom News.