IDENTITIES IN CONSTRUCTION
Western Sahara is the last remaining colony in Africa.
Formerly a Spanish colony, it was illegally annexed by Morocco in 1975. The brutality of the military invasion forced most of the Sahrawi population to seek shelter in refugee camps in the Algerian desert, where they still live 47 years later. A 2,500 km long military wall separates them from the remaining Sahrawis in the occupied territory, a minority subjected to systematic repression by the Moroccan authorities.
In 1991, the United Nations was mandated to organize a referendum for self-determination. However, a status quo prevails, allowing the Moroccan occupation to intensify in defiance of international law.
This territory, a valuable booty, is being transformed into a private property of great economic and commercial importance.
The plundering of natural resources goes hand in hand with the massive economic migration of Moroccan settlers to Western Sahara which has led to a rapid and large-scale development of town planning.
The aim of this demographic battle is to wipe out the Sahrawi identity by the massive implantation of Moroccan settlers.
These different mechanisms of occupation and deculturation of the Sahrawi people target a point of no return. The erosion of their right to a referendum of self-determination in order to culminate in an irreversible « Moroccan-ization » of Western Sahara.
Moroccan urban construction in the desert is the tangible form of this territorial conflict which has been dragging on in silence for decades.
These photographs decipher this landscape, the sole strategy to bypass police surveillance and reveal how this colonialism operates. This shattered landscape abundantly testifies to Moroccan political strategies.
Formerly a Spanish colony, it was illegally annexed by Morocco in 1975. The brutality of the military invasion forced most of the Sahrawi population to seek shelter in refugee camps in the Algerian desert, where they still live 47 years later. A 2,500 km long military wall separates them from the remaining Sahrawis in the occupied territory, a minority subjected to systematic repression by the Moroccan authorities.
In 1991, the United Nations was mandated to organize a referendum for self-determination. However, a status quo prevails, allowing the Moroccan occupation to intensify in defiance of international law.
This territory, a valuable booty, is being transformed into a private property of great economic and commercial importance.
The plundering of natural resources goes hand in hand with the massive economic migration of Moroccan settlers to Western Sahara which has led to a rapid and large-scale development of town planning.
The aim of this demographic battle is to wipe out the Sahrawi identity by the massive implantation of Moroccan settlers.
These different mechanisms of occupation and deculturation of the Sahrawi people target a point of no return. The erosion of their right to a referendum of self-determination in order to culminate in an irreversible « Moroccan-ization » of Western Sahara.
Moroccan urban construction in the desert is the tangible form of this territorial conflict which has been dragging on in silence for decades.
These photographs decipher this landscape, the sole strategy to bypass police surveillance and reveal how this colonialism operates. This shattered landscape abundantly testifies to Moroccan political strategies.
︎︎
« The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own population into the territories it occupies »
Fourth Geneva Convention,
Article 49
Fourth Geneva Convention,
Article 49
