 I'm Joshua Cooper. Welcome to Cooper Union. What's happening with human rights around our world? On Think Tech Live, broadcasting from our downtown studio in Honolulu, Hawaii in Moana, Nuiakea. Today, we're looking at self-determination in Western Sahara. Africa's last colony seeks greater autonomy. We're very excited to be joined by Pavel, who'll be able to share with us an exciting visit that they had just done bearing witness around the important aspect. Pavel, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. It's really great to be with you. We know Western and Sahara is seeking the sacrosanct right of self-determination under international human rights law. We know that law is in the UN Charter that was drafted in San Francisco, but also made it into the International Bill of Rights, the Common Article 1. Could you share with us a bit about what is the right of self-determination and why is it so important for Western Sahara? Of course. So in 1960, the United Nations put out this declaration, it's called the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries, and it's set in motion or hope to set in motion and reflect the desires of large numbers of people around the world to liberate themselves from the colonial order which had persisted for centuries and had kept them underdeveloped and had kept them in a position where they were incapable of building sovereign to your self-determination. And that declaration has these wonderful words which say that the process of liberation is irresistible and irreversible. And in fact, it was under that declaration that pressure was put on the Spanish government to liberate Western Sahara, which since the late 19th century was one of its colonies. That process, of course, as in every anti-colonial struggle was aided and led by the Sarawi National Liberation Movement themselves. That movement had several incarnations. Most recently in 1973, a movement called the Polisario Front was formed, which continues to lead the struggle for liberation. But as you had mentioned in the introduction, Western Sahara remains as the last colony in Africa. It remains recognized by the United Nations as the final non-self-governing territory on the continent and it is the last, one of the largest non-self-governing territories in the world. And so, you know, it's unacceptable. And it's an abomination that on Europe's doorstep, there continues to be a state that has no rights, that has no right to sovereignty, that has no right to use its resources for the benefit of its people. And that continues to struggle for its liberation. Thank you so much. And we know Spain did withdraw in 1975 and then Morocco immediately claimed control, denying the Sarawi people the right of self-determination. Could you share with us a bit about some of the campaigns and some of the leaders that were able to keep this movement alive for the last five decades? That's right. Well, that movement has been the Polisario Front. So the Polisario Front was founded in 1973, originally to oppose Spanish colonialism. But of course, as you say, Spain withdrew in 1975, effectively abandoning its colony. Immediately, Western Sahara was invaded by Morocco and Mauritania, its neighbors to the north and to the south, who had for a long time made claims to the territory. They, of course, were eyeing the Sarawi people's mineral wealth and coastline, which continues to be a vast source of wealth for the Moroccan occupying forces. And we can talk a little bit more about that later. But basically, since 1975, since the Moroccan invasion, the Sarawi National Liberation process, and it is a fully fledged process that involves state building, that involves building institutions of popular power, that involves building cultural institutions and establishing norms that then can become or find expression in statehood after liberation, that movement has been led by the Polisario Front for the entirety of the last five decades. And that's really the essence of what we're describing. And as you said, irresistible and irreversible. And common article one of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but also the International Covenant on Economic Social Rights, has three parts explaining what right of self-determination is. In paragraph one, it's all people have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right, they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development. So we're getting into some of those aspects. But I think paragraph two is almost even more important to build on what you just shared, because it says all people's made for their own ends freely disposed of their natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any obligations arising out of international economic cooperation based on the principle of mutual benefit and international law. In no case may people be deprived of its own mean of subsistence. And that's where you're trying to get at in sharing. It seems that of course, looking at Western Sahara, it's the people of Morocco using that for economic gain, but also to subjugate the people. Because the third paragraph points out that the state parties to the present covenant, including those having responsibility for administration of non-self-governing and trust territories, shall promote the realization of the right of self-determination and shall respect that right, in conforming with the provisions of the Charter of the UN. How is this not happening? And what are the next steps that people see being pursued? So let me take a step back a little bit and talk about the camps. When Morocco invaded in 1975, a large part of the Sarawak population was effectively forced into exile. They were forced on a long march into the desert into the Algerian Sahara. And a part of the desert that they call the desert within the desert, because it's so barren, the sand is so saturated with salt that nothing grows there. So incredibly desolate conditions, incredibly difficult to build any kind of society there. But they established these refugee camps there with the support of the Algerian government. And they named them after cities that were lost under the occupation. So there are cities that exist in occupied Western Sahara and the names of the camps are the same as those cities. And for example, in a straight line, the camp called Smara is just 400 kilometers from the city called Smara. But it's completely unassailable at this distance. Because in the 1980s, Morocco built a wall, a sand wall, that's 2,700 kilometers long. It's the second longest defensive structure built in human history after the Great Wall of China. It has several layers of defense. First, you have approximately 7 million landmines that line the wall on the side of the liberated territory. Then you have barbed wire, military outposts, guard dogs. You have about 150,000 troops at least stationed in these outposts all along the wall. Then you have artillery systems. Now more recently you've had Israeli and Turkish drones. You have very sophisticated NATO radar systems where basically if you get to anywhere within 30 to 40 kilometers of the wall, you start getting volleys of artillery fire coming at you. So this reality prevents the Sarawi people from establishing meaningful contact with their land, with the land that they're trying to reclaim. The families are divided. They have no access to their resources. They depend entirely on humanitarian aid and solidarity of countries and people from different parts of the world. The reason for that is the hyper militarization of that space. The complete separation of the people who live in the liberated territories, including the refugee camps in Algeria and the occupied territories in western Sahara and Popper. Looking at some of these abuses, these human rights, severe violations, there was examples of aerial bombardments with napalm and white phosphorus of the Sarawi refugee camps. Also the consequent exodus of tens of thousands Sarawi civilians from the country and this continued forced expropriation expulsion of tens of thousands. You give some amazing historical aspects that most people wouldn't be aware of, but what is taking place today and how is that continuing? What are the most severe gross violations of human rights today? Putting it into context, western Sahara holds tremendous economic value for Morocco for primarily two reasons, but there are more than that. Maybe I can speak about some of the others as well. The first are the phosphates. Western Sahara has some of the richest resources, the richest pools of phosphates anywhere in the world. Of course, these are used for fertilizers and they're hugely important, especially now, but also they have some of the richest and most abundant fishing grounds anywhere in the world. In fact, one of the members of our delegation and will come to our delegation that at one point had visited the occupied territories and he saw the multi-billion dollar infrastructure that Morocco had built to take these resources out of western Sahara and siphon them out and send them to all the countries of the world. They had this exhibition in one of the fishing factories of all the different packaging that they use for all the different countries. They had little flags of every country. There was this nation point for these products and it was over 100 countries around the world. There is a huge economic impetus for that occupation and it also means that the ways in which they enforce their occupation are particularly vicious. Of course, you've talked about the name. At one point there was a near genocide of the Sahara people. They were being exterminated by the Moroccans, but looking forward to today, there is an insane degree of surveillance. Infamously, the Moroccan government had used the Pegasus, Israeli Pegasus software against thousands of both Moroccan and Sarawi human rights activists in the occupied territories spying on them, reading their messages. Many of them subsequently got disappeared or were arrested or were tortured or were put under house arrest. Female detainees are routinely raped in captivity, but beyond that, there are basically no, none of the fundamental rights that we might expect exist for the Sarawi people in the occupied territories. There's no freedom of assembly. There's no freedom of speech. All of that is met with fierce violence from the Moroccan occupiers. One of the difficulties is that human rights defenders within Western Sahara don't have the means to document these atrocities and don't have the means to amplify these atrocities. Their cameras, for example, get confiscated regularly and they have no way to acquire new cameras. Although one way to support that struggle is to deliver camera equipment, and I'm working with some activists who are currently working on that. Another is that the human rights organizations that are involved in telling these stories and writing reports and amplifying these struggles, they're in many cases separated from Western Sahara itself, so one of the main ones operates in the refugee camps that we visited. And there's a big challenge in getting information across. There's a big challenge in maintaining digital security and security of communications in that process in a way that doesn't jeopardize or compromise people on the ground in the occupied territories. And so there's a whole raft of difficulties in resisting this at the moment. No, and when you describe that, it reminds us of many issues here in the Pacific. We had the situation of Nauru being colonized by multiple nations of Europe and then, of course, taking all the resources. And that's really what, of course, is going on with colonization, extraction of the resources. It's not a genuine exchange between peoples that goes along with the subjugation, but also you shared as well the examples of the food and fish. And to not be able to taste your own fish that you would, of course, been able to grow up and be nourished on, that is a huge situation. And then, of course, even more painful that it's exported everywhere around the world to other people, but then denied to the very people who should be able to appreciate and grow up on this important nutritious item that, of course, is valued here in Oceania and in the Pacific. You also then talked about some important violations of women's rights as well with the rapes. And that allows me to then think a little bit more about the important work that you did. We know a delegation from 12 countries on five continents under your organization Progressive International led a human rights movement of bearing witness to the denial of democracy for five decades. Maybe you could share with us the account from visiting the salary of people seeking self-determination and give us all a little bit of that insight since we weren't able to go there and look at why it's so important as there's, we really appreciate the quest for quiet that the salary people are pursuing to be able to not be disturbed, but also that pursuit of peace rooted in human rights for all people. So we, the Progressive International is a network, it's a global network of organizations of individuals from pretty all around the world that organizes campaigns like this that tries to articulate common positions within this broad and diverse network to create strategies, to create campaigns that can tackle some of the big challenges that we face and that can help build power for organizations in different countries for more popular movements, for trade unions, for political parties, even for independent publications. Now we were invited by the Polisario Front, by the Sari National Liberation Movement to visit the refugee camps in Algeria and not only to bear witness to the struggle, which is important because at least in Germany where I live, if you ask 100 people in the street whether they know about Western Sahara, you'll be very lucky if one person says that they do and this is a colony on Europe's doorstep. But the purpose of our visit wasn't only to bear witness and amplify that struggle, although that is and remains and will remain a very important part of the work of solidarity, but it was to bring together different organizations who had in the past worked with the Sari people who maybe would like to work with the Sari people and give them an opportunity to meet with their peers on the ground, to introduce political forces from Europe with political forces in the refugee camps, to introduce human rights defenders in Europe with human rights defenders in the refugee camps, to introduce a feminist movement, we had a pan-African feminist movement with us, a representative from Sudan and one from Nigeria, to introduce them to the union of Sari women so they could plan together so they could understand what's necessary. We had also a representative from the Simon Balivar Institute in Venezuela who had been involved in the past in solidarity work with Western Sahara and I will talk about that a little bit more later, but he was there to see what the effects of that work in the past had been and what else might be needed, where else the state of Venezuela can come in and support the Sari people. So on one level the mission, the delegation was very much to raise awareness, but another it was to build durable bonds of solidarity within these organizations that can persist beyond the delegation and that can find very, that can identify concrete ways that people can support the struggle from their own countries and from their own struggles and their own movements and their own political parties. No and that brings up a couple of points that we could look at. I know at the Oslo Freedom Forum they were looking at Pegasus in that important way that it's being used and how it then denies people their right to be able to communicate freely and of course gather more information to then subjugate people. Could you maybe share a little bit more about that aspect and how then also sharing the equipment so people can then document human rights and how valuable that is going forward. So this is a question that I brought to many people in the refugee camps. Pegasus as a software just to give some context was developed by this Israeli company which basically licensed it out to various governments various governmental and non-governmental actors and the Moroccan government was one of the clients. There was a big scandal where it turned out they were using the technology to spy not only on activists within their own country not only on activists within occupied western Sahara but also on members of western governments to then more effectively blackmail them and one of the ways in which Morocco has sustained the complicity of certain western governments is through a program of blackmail one dimension of which has been presumably the whatever they lean from their use of the software but the other of course is the threat that they'll flood Europe with migrants which is a constant issue that's not that they use against the very syrian government. Now Pegasus allows an actor to go into a mobile mobile phone of someone infected with the software and effectively be able to see anything that's done have access to passwords have access to keystrokes switch on the camera switch on the microphone even in some cases where the phone itself is switched off so the the technology is programmed in that way and so they used it fairly indiscriminately I think there are over 1000 documented cases of Moroccan and Sarawi refugees being targeted and then arrested based on this use and I presume that this is still ongoing today and in fact I was told in the camps that everyone knows that they're being surveilled and one of the challenges of course is that like many people over the world the main means of communication is WhatsApp and WhatsApp is in the main the most secure platform available especially when we're talking about human rights investigation we're talking about top-level government work but WhatsApp unfortunately for better or worse has become the default for so many people because it's easy to use sometimes because it's bundled with internet packages not not there but in different parts of the world and so it's very difficult to build that kind of digital literacy that maybe you know we take in granted for granted in Europe in a place that just doesn't has never had the resources to do that and so one of the concrete ways I'm exploring of supporting the struggle is speaking with technologists working with technologists to develop some kind of toolkit that can help the the people of western Sahara and the people of the refugee camps move beyond these not very secure modes of communication to build at least a modicum of digital security into their everyday practices and it reminds me of a time in Timor-Leste I was there at an Asia forum on civil society and it was exciting because we were in Timor-Leste in Dile and the way the youth never forget their history there was so powerful because it was one of the most powerful positive passionate speeches I've ever heard was by youth in Timor-Leste about western Sahara because he said it's a sense of solidarity that if anyone's rights are denied all of our rights are denied and when that student shared about western Sahara you know it's the other side of the world from Oceania in the Pacific but it's really important as we think what everyone should know and as people know this information and think about it what are some next steps of how people can support western Sahara and what are some small steps that people can take and then what are some exciting future actions that progressive international and other movements will be doing to support sorry people. If I can if I can just start you said something interesting which is about the way in which people in occupied territories think about their own history and that's something very beautiful that I saw in the Sahara people in the refugee camps there are people who have never been to western Sahara they were never able to go but they have a very deep connection to that land and I heard a wonderful story when we were there from one of the ambassadors Ubi Bachir is the ambassador to the Polisario Front for Europe and the European Union and he had arrived just just after graduation arrived in the camps in 1991 when this new process was in motion so the United Nations mission for the referendum in western Sahara Minerso had just announced that they would hold a plebiscite in some not very long amount of time that would allow the Sahara people to choose between becoming a part of Morocco and independence and he told me there was jubilation in the streets and people started packing their boxes and started putting all their belongings in these boxes ready to go back because the referendum was coming now that was three decades ago and that referendum still hasn't come and yet that connection with the land is still really powerful and the connection with the history of the struggle is extremely powerful so you know that in itself was extremely humbling to see and really really valuable and really important to see this connection that people have not only with their own history but also with their own land in a way that is deeply knowledgeable and that is deeply respectful and that is that is deeply hopeful about the possibility of independence now where we go from here there's a program of work that we're continuing to develop with the delegates from different countries personally I'm involved right now in helping to coordinate an international solidarity conference which has been going on since 1975 but this year it's going to be in Berlin Germany where I live so I'm helping coordinate that one of the things we wanted to do in the camps is shoot a short documentary film so that it's currently being edited and we hope to release that next year individually the different delegates are looking at ways in which their institutions can support the struggle whether that's by sending other delegations to the camps whether it's by sending engineers or spare parts or medical equipment one of the one of the places where we visited was a school for disabled children in the camps and we went to they had a little medical cabinet there and as we were leaving the head of the school asks us to give up all of the paracetamol that we had on us because they don't have any paracetamol very basic things and so we mapped out what these different organizations need and we're now looking at ways of providing that whether that's cameras to independent journalists and human rights defenders or it's know-how on digital security for the human rights defenders or it's engineers who can help dig deep wells they need to dig dig wells that are between 120 and 300 meters deep to get water in the desert or it's teachers or it's IT equipment for schools and so there's a lot of things you have to understand that this is a people who live in the middle of the desert who rely almost exclusively on humanitarian aid a lot of it provided by UNHCR and now unfortunately because many state budgets in Europe and the US are being redirected from foreign aid to war that budget is funded I think it's 1% funded for this year for Algeria and so it's a really dire situation and so they need everything and the question is what are the capacities of the organizations I want to support the struggle because any kind of support is valuable but the first thing to do is to talk to your friends to talk to your movements because no one knows about the struggle and this is the first demand that we hear from the Sarawit people themselves all the time help spread the word help tell the people that our struggle is just that we have been fighting for self-determination for decades and that we will win this struggle but we need the support of progressive forces everywhere to do so and when you describe that it really is in a way at least by you being at first hand you make the connections with the people but then you build a bridge of knowing what is needed and which NGOs and civil society as well as UN agencies as you mentioned UNHCR can provide those most essential details to allow to live a life of dignity and equality and so I think that is what people are at and also sharing and when you did describe that connection to the land that's what many indigenous peoples around the world face it's that spiritual connection to that space and I love how you shared that they named all of the camps after the name of the place back home and in a way they take home with them in their hearts but of course we know there must be action to take to reverse that can you share a little bit about when the conference will take place in Berlin and how will contribute to the larger campaign that's right so so there's an annual conference that's been taking place since 1975 in different European countries it's called U-Coco EU COCO it's the European Conference of Solidarity with the Sarawak people every year the purpose of the conference is to set an agenda for the broader international solidarity movement for the year that for the year ahead so this year there will be a series of workshops on a range of themes that bring to the table various political forces whether they're members of parliament or organizations and decide on you know what the urgent topic is for the year ahead now one of the interesting things in Europe at the moment is that if you look at so let me take a step back there there was a legal case about a decade and a half ago which set a precedent a very interesting precedent the case was dismissed but it set the precedent basically acknowledging that the European Union has no business making trade deals with Morocco over western Saharan land because Morocco doesn't have sovereignty over that land now that case had no practical impact but the judgment was made and the precedent was set now that case is being appealed right now and it's very likely that the highest court in the European Union will make a determination towards the end of this year or the start of next year which renders every treaty that the European Union has signed with Morocco over western Sahara null and void validates all of it it's very likely to happen and I think Morocco knows this and what Morocco has been doing is it's been putting forward you know through a through both carrot and stick a proposal that would recognize western Sahara as a semi-autonomous territory or an autonomous territory within Morocco of course none of the Sarawi people want this but they've been building support I think because in expectation of that court judgment building support in different European countries starting with Spain moving to France moving to Germany for this proposal as an alternative to Sarawi self-determination and so this is now underway and it looks like Germany has changed its position somewhat or it used to recognize the international legal position that recognizes western Sahara as an occupied colonized territory and have started to hint at the possibility that they might suggest the Moroccan proposal and so there's a particular importance this year in hosting this conference in Germany to bring attention to this and to stress the need for the German government to realign its political position with what has been clear under international law for a very long time thank you so much Bob Vell for sharing and giving an update but also give bring us to the next steps of how everyone can support and show solidarity with the Sarawi people and next steps of what we can do together to ensure the rightest self-determination for all thank you for today thank you so much for having thank you so much for watching think tech Hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo you can also follow us on facebook instagram twitter and linked in and donate to us at thinktech hawaii.com mahalo