Monday, January 3, 2011
Staging a Human Rights Atrocity
By JENNIFER RUBIN - 11.23.2010 - 5:25 PM
It has become a familiar pattern: violent provocateurs create a confrontation with lightly armed anti-riot squads. The state officials defend themselves. The instigators claim there has been an atrocity. The flotilla incident? Why, yes. But also a recent confrontation between Morocco and the violent Polisario Front, which refuses to accept a Moroccan autonomy plan for the Western Sahara and keeps refugees warehoused in dismal camps in Algeria.
As the Israeli government did in the flotilla incident, the government of Morocco has put out a video of a recent incident in Laayoune. This video, which is exceptionally graphic but should be reviewed in full to appreciate the extent of the Polisario Front’s propaganda campaign, shows peaceful demonstrators in a tent city (who came to protest overcrowding, totally unrelated to the dispute in the Western Sahara) dispersed without incident by Moroccan police, loaded onto government-provided buses, and exiting the area. Then onto the scene come the Polisario Front, with knives, rock-throwers, incendiary devices, and much brutality. What unfolds — vicious attacks on the police, the ambush of an ambulance, buildings burning in the city center, a near beheading of a policeman, etc. — is evidence that the Polisario Front is the aggressor in this incident.
And yet the Polisario Front, with a willing media, played the incident up as a human rights violation — by the government of Morocco. This report duly regurgitates the Polisario Front’s claim that the Moroccan government was guilty “of carrying out ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Laayoune and warned the international community that if it did not intervene to find a peaceful solution, ‘the Sahrawi people will resort to all measures, including war.’” This AP report tells us: “Moroccan forces raided a protest camp in the disputed territory of Western Sahara on Monday and unrest spread to a nearby city, with buildings ablaze and rioters roaming the streets. Five Moroccan security officials and one demonstrator were killed, reports said.” One would think that the government’s forces instigated the violence with the peaceful protesters there, and it would be hard to glean — as the video shows — that the protest camp had been dismantled before the Polisario Front forces attacked the police.
So what is going on here? Well, it seems that the incident came just as there was to begin the “re-opening of informal U.N.-sponsored talks Monday in Manhasset, New York, between Morocco and the Polisario Front, which long waged a guerrilla war on Morocco in a bid to gain independence for the desert region and its native Saharawi people.” Hmm. Sort of like the killing of Jews that inevitably breaks out when “peace” talks begin between Israel and the PA.
Whether the group is the PA or the Polisario Front, the modus operandi is the same — stage violence, claim victimhood, label the incident as a human rights atrocity, and thereby delay or disrupt peace negotiations that might resolve the conflict and leave the terrorists without a cause. You would think the media would be on to it. Unless, of course, they really don’t care about getting the story straight.
It has become a familiar pattern: violent provocateurs create a confrontation with lightly armed anti-riot squads. The state officials defend themselves. The instigators claim there has been an atrocity. The flotilla incident? Why, yes. But also a recent confrontation between Morocco and the violent Polisario Front, which refuses to accept a Moroccan autonomy plan for the Western Sahara and keeps refugees warehoused in dismal camps in Algeria.
As the Israeli government did in the flotilla incident, the government of Morocco has put out a video of a recent incident in Laayoune. This video, which is exceptionally graphic but should be reviewed in full to appreciate the extent of the Polisario Front’s propaganda campaign, shows peaceful demonstrators in a tent city (who came to protest overcrowding, totally unrelated to the dispute in the Western Sahara) dispersed without incident by Moroccan police, loaded onto government-provided buses, and exiting the area. Then onto the scene come the Polisario Front, with knives, rock-throwers, incendiary devices, and much brutality. What unfolds — vicious attacks on the police, the ambush of an ambulance, buildings burning in the city center, a near beheading of a policeman, etc. — is evidence that the Polisario Front is the aggressor in this incident.
And yet the Polisario Front, with a willing media, played the incident up as a human rights violation — by the government of Morocco. This report duly regurgitates the Polisario Front’s claim that the Moroccan government was guilty “of carrying out ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Laayoune and warned the international community that if it did not intervene to find a peaceful solution, ‘the Sahrawi people will resort to all measures, including war.’” This AP report tells us: “Moroccan forces raided a protest camp in the disputed territory of Western Sahara on Monday and unrest spread to a nearby city, with buildings ablaze and rioters roaming the streets. Five Moroccan security officials and one demonstrator were killed, reports said.” One would think that the government’s forces instigated the violence with the peaceful protesters there, and it would be hard to glean — as the video shows — that the protest camp had been dismantled before the Polisario Front forces attacked the police.
So what is going on here? Well, it seems that the incident came just as there was to begin the “re-opening of informal U.N.-sponsored talks Monday in Manhasset, New York, between Morocco and the Polisario Front, which long waged a guerrilla war on Morocco in a bid to gain independence for the desert region and its native Saharawi people.” Hmm. Sort of like the killing of Jews that inevitably breaks out when “peace” talks begin between Israel and the PA.
Whether the group is the PA or the Polisario Front, the modus operandi is the same — stage violence, claim victimhood, label the incident as a human rights atrocity, and thereby delay or disrupt peace negotiations that might resolve the conflict and leave the terrorists without a cause. You would think the media would be on to it. Unless, of course, they really don’t care about getting the story straight.
Moroccan parliament to probe W. Sahara violence
RABAT — Moroccan members of parliament on Monday decided to set up a commission to probe the violent events on November 8 that marked the dismantling of a settlement camp in the Western Sahara.
"It's the first time that a parliamentary commission of inquiry will work in the (Western) Sahara," Saad-Eddine Othmani, an MP from the opposition Justice and Development Party (PJD) and one of the vice-presidents of the commission, told AFP.
According to a statement published Monday by the parliament, the commission will investigate "the events at the Gdim Izik camp and the acts of violence recently witnessed in Laayoune," the chief town in the Moroccan-controlled territory.
Moroccan security forces on November 8 stormed and dismantled the Gdim Izik camp erected outside Laayoune by some 15,000 Sahrawis who objected to living conditions inside the town.
Violence erupted, in which Morocco says that 11 security officers and two civilians were killed, while the Polisario Front, which wants independence for the Western Sahara, says the casualty toll was far higher.
"Among the objectives of this commission, which will work for at least 45 days, are the pinpointing of responsibilities for what happened in Laayoune, from the putting up of the first tents right up to the events that followed the dismantling of the camp," Othmani said.
On November 25, the European parliament said it favoured a United Nations inquiry into the violence and voiced "the greatest concern about the significant deterioration of the situation in Western Sahara."
Tens of thousands of Moroccans marched Sunday in the northern port city of Casablanca to denounce what they saw as a "biased and unjust" resolution by the European parliament, accusing Spain's opposition Popular Party of being behind it.
Spain was the colonial power in the Western Sahara until 1975, when settlers left and Morocco later annexed the phosphate-rich territory.
Morocco has already rejected the notion of an investigation into the violence by the UN force deployed in the Western Sahara, MINURSO, which is monitoring a 1991 ceasefire between government troops and the Polisario Front and is mandated to oversee a referendum on the territory's future.
Polisario, backed notably by neighbouring Algeria, wants a UN-organised referendum that would give Sahrawis a choice among three options: being part of Moroccan territory, independence or self-government under Moroccan sovereignty.
Morocco will only agree to broad autonomy under its sovereignty and rejects any notion of independence.
"It's the first time that a parliamentary commission of inquiry will work in the (Western) Sahara," Saad-Eddine Othmani, an MP from the opposition Justice and Development Party (PJD) and one of the vice-presidents of the commission, told AFP.
According to a statement published Monday by the parliament, the commission will investigate "the events at the Gdim Izik camp and the acts of violence recently witnessed in Laayoune," the chief town in the Moroccan-controlled territory.
Moroccan security forces on November 8 stormed and dismantled the Gdim Izik camp erected outside Laayoune by some 15,000 Sahrawis who objected to living conditions inside the town.
Violence erupted, in which Morocco says that 11 security officers and two civilians were killed, while the Polisario Front, which wants independence for the Western Sahara, says the casualty toll was far higher.
"Among the objectives of this commission, which will work for at least 45 days, are the pinpointing of responsibilities for what happened in Laayoune, from the putting up of the first tents right up to the events that followed the dismantling of the camp," Othmani said.
On November 25, the European parliament said it favoured a United Nations inquiry into the violence and voiced "the greatest concern about the significant deterioration of the situation in Western Sahara."
Tens of thousands of Moroccans marched Sunday in the northern port city of Casablanca to denounce what they saw as a "biased and unjust" resolution by the European parliament, accusing Spain's opposition Popular Party of being behind it.
Spain was the colonial power in the Western Sahara until 1975, when settlers left and Morocco later annexed the phosphate-rich territory.
Morocco has already rejected the notion of an investigation into the violence by the UN force deployed in the Western Sahara, MINURSO, which is monitoring a 1991 ceasefire between government troops and the Polisario Front and is mandated to oversee a referendum on the territory's future.
Polisario, backed notably by neighbouring Algeria, wants a UN-organised referendum that would give Sahrawis a choice among three options: being part of Moroccan territory, independence or self-government under Moroccan sovereignty.
Morocco will only agree to broad autonomy under its sovereignty and rejects any notion of independence.
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