The Robert Kennedy Foundation’s fierce defense of the Polisario’s separatist theses stirs doubts and even the anger of the Sahrawis who are attached to their homeland, Morocco. Several members of the Sahrawi Diaspora flew to New York earlier this week to denounce, before the United Nations, “the timing, bias and instrumentalization of human rights” by the Robert Kennedy Foundation (RKF ) and Spanish actor Javier Bardem, co-producer of a propaganda documentary film upholding the Polisario separatist thesis. Parliamentarians, civil society activists and students from the Moroccan southern provinces took the floor during a meeting on human rights in Western Sahara to set the record straight. They expressed surprise and indignation at the untruths, false testimonies and excessive exaggeration of facts exposed by the RKF and filmmaker Bardem to an audience that knows almost nothing about the Western Sahara conflict and its genesis. To document his film, Spanish actor Javier Bardem compiled data from Polisario “propagandist websites” and based his allegations on tales concocted by the Algerian military intelligence services and disseminated by the leaders of the separatist movement. A member of the Sahrawi delegation, Mbarka Bouaida, said during the meeting that the Sahara provinces recorded a tremendous economic development over just a few years, contrary to the testimony of “hate” made by Mrs. Kerry Kennedy, against Morocco and its institutions, in an “account of her recent visit to Laayoune.” Mrs Kennedy’s statements are just untrue, Mbarka Bouaida said. Mbarka Bouaida also recalled how the Spanish TV channel “Antena 3” had tried to manipulate viewers when it presented images of victims of an assassination crime in Casablanca, as being the photos of victims of alleged repression in Western Sahara. These images had been disseminated worldwide by the Spanish media which are manipulated by the Polisario separatists and generously showered with Algerian petrodollars.
Lahcen Ould Mbarek Ould Omar Ould Rami Mahraoui, a Paris-based researcher native of the Sahara region, questioned Javier Bardem on his “bias” and on the choice of his documentary film title “The sons of the clouds: the last colony.” “What do you mean by colony? Do you mean Ceuta and Melilla or the Jaafarine islands”? The invective has somewhat destabilized the Spanish actor. Amina Mae al-Aïnine, a young Moroccan Sahrawi MP, on her part challenged Sahrawi activist Aminatou Haidar and told her she has no right to speak on behalf of the Sahrawis. The young MP asked Bardem to describe to the audience how the Sahara was when Spain, the former colonial power, left the region in 1975. It was nothing else than a desolate desert, she insisted. After these embarrassing remarks by members of the Sahrawi delegation, the meeting moderator and organizers, obviously very disturbed and surprised by the turn of the debates, rushed to conclude the session.