DEMOCRACY NOW
We go to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, where activists are shining a light on Morocco’s brutal occupation of Western Sahara and its Indigenous people, the Sahrawi. The Sahrawi journalist and activist Asria Mohamed speaks with Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman about “Jaimitna,” an art installation that evokes the tents of Sahrawi people living in refugee camps. The installation features various melhfas, traditional clothing worn by Sahrawi women, and includes their stories. “These women, they spent years and years in prison. They have been tortured. They have been beaten up. They have been raped,” Mohamed says. We also speak with María Carrión, executive director of FiSahara, the Sahara International Film Festival, who says the story of the Sahrawi must be better known. Morocco has occupied Western Sahara since 1975 in defiance of the United Nations and the international community. The first Trump administration recognized Moroccan sovereignty in 2020 as part of a larger effort to normalize relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
Transcript
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NERMEEN SHAIKH: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Nermeen Shaikh in New York.
AMY GOODMAN: And I’m Amy Goodman in Geneva, Switzerland. We’re broadcasting from the United Nations Human Rights Council, that is behind me right now, in an unusual event. A tent has just been erected at the doorway, the entrance to the U.N. Rights Council, that is made of the melhfas, the dresses of 19 Sahrawi human rights defenders, women who have been subjected to sexual violence, political violence by the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara. Yesterday, I had the chance to go into the tent, when it was first erected, and speak to the woman, the creator, the Sahrawi refugee who created it.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! We’re here in Geneva inside a “Jaimitna.” What’s a Jaimitna? Well, we have the woman who created it here to describe. Tell us your name and what we’re standing in. What is this structure?
ASRIA MOHAMED: My name is Asria Mohamed. I am from Western Sahara, but I was born and I grew up in the Sahrawi refugee camps. And “Jaimitna” is actually a mini version of the tent where I grew up in the Sahrawi refugee camps. So, this is very a mini version of it, and this is a storytelling — a human rights storytelling project, which both convey the story of Sahrawis, their identity and their culture. So, from outside, it’s made from the same material. It’s canvas that is typically given by the humanitarian aid. And from inside, and that’s what’s special about it, it has melhfa. And melhfa is Sahrawi traditional clothing. It’s similar to sari. It’s three meters times —
AMY GOODMAN: Women’s dress.
ASRIA MOHAMED: Women’s dress, yes. And what’s special about it, normally, we would use normal, plain fabric, but the new idea is that I asked 19 human rights defenders to send their clothing. Textile could be very powerful. It’s the most authentic way for these women to be here. They are not allowed to be here. They are all from the occupied territories of Western Sahara.
AMY GOODMAN: And it’s their own saris —
ASRIA MOHAMED: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: — their own dresses —
ASRIA MOHAMED: Their own —
AMY GOODMAN: — their own melhfas.
ASRIA MOHAMED: Their own melhfas, which they wear. I mean, I don’t know if we could move on the other side, but in that melhfa there, it’s for a human rights defender called Zeinabu. And this woman, she sent me her melhfa, which has actually blood stain on it. I decided to cut away the blood, but I still actually have it here. I can show it to you later. And it was from a demonstration where she was violently beaten up by the Moroccan police.
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about the QR codes. They look like price tags that are hanging off of each melhfa.
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