The people of Western Sahara have long fought for their national independence, first against Spanish colonial rule, and today against the Moroccan regime’s occupation troops.

On November 19, about 90 Saharawi students began a sit-in in a central square in the town of Assa, southern Morocco, according to a report sent to the Militant by the protest’s organizers. The students are demanding jobs and an end to the repressive “security policies” of the Moroccan regime. Over the next several days, large marches in solidarity with the students were held through the town, as the Moroccan army sent a detachment of hundreds of soldiers in a show of force. The provincial governor threatened to take “serious measures” if the students didn’t halt the protest, the organizers reported.

In an act of solidarity with the students in Assa, students and graduates reportedly protested November 21 in three towns inside occupied Western Sahara, demanding jobs and the right to travel to southern Moroccan towns for schooling.

Assa is about 75 miles north of the border of Western Sahara. It has a large Saharawi population, and is home to a well-known Saharawi independence fighter, Ali Salem Tamek. Tamek was released from his third stint in Morocco’s dungeons last January. After a broad campaign by his defenders, including public demonstrations, Tamek recently won the right to a passport to travel out of the country, which had previously been denied by the Moroccan authorities.

On September 22 a large demonstration took place in Assa marking the fifth anniversary of a 1999 rebellion that was repressed bloodily by the Moroccan authorities. According to Afrol, a Norwegian-based press agency that provides news on Africa, some 3,000 people joined the march holding signs with slogans saying “Hey king! Hey donkey! The Sahara is for the rebels!” and “We asked for freedom—They sent us more police agents.”

On the same day, protests occurred in the Western Saharan cities of Smara and El Aaiun, the capital.

Saharawis and others inside Morocco who engage in protests have suffered brutal government repression under a spate of laws designed to preserve the autocratic government. Over the last several years, however, the regime has come under pressure from Washington, which is seeking to supplant Paris’s influence in that country, to institute “democratic” reforms in order to clean up its image and increase stability there.

In January a number of Saharawi prisoners were released along with other opponents of the monarch—including a prominent Moroccan editor who was arrested for publishing an interview supporting independence for Western Sahara. In June, the Moroccan government agreed to allow exchanges between Saharawis in the refugee camps and the occupied territories, many seeing family for the first time since the mid-1970s.

While dozens of political prisoners remain in Moroccan jails and acts of protest still meet with repression, these modest openings have increased the political space and confidence among Saharawis living under Moroccan occupation to advance their struggle and to establish broader connections with the rebels in the refugee camps.

A Reuters reporter noted in an October 28 dispatch from the occupied territories, “The simple fact is that Sahrawi dreams of independence have not faded. Both in Laayoune [El Aaiun] and in the far-off refugee camps, there is talk of taking up arms again for what everyone calls The Cause.”  
 
 
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