Sunday 9 November marks the 25th anniversary of the dismantling of the famous Berlin Wall. It is an opportunity to celebrate and to demand an end to other walls that are often silenced. There is the wall in Palestine, in Mexico, in Ceuta and Melilla, and the wall that divides Western Sahara, which was built by Morocco 30 years ago.

The wall is 2700 kilometers long; it was constructed by the Moroccan army with international support in the early eighties. It is the world’s longest minefield. The “Wall of Shame”, as the Sahrawis call it, hides more than 7 million mines and prevents the demining of one of the most mined areas of the world, which is also contaminated with remnants of war and cluster bombs, according to demining NGOs working in the area.

This wall has separated Sahrawi families living in the occupied Western Sahara and the refugee camps in exile and has destroyed their nomadic way of life. Every year, it causes a great number of causalities or serious amputations on both sides of the berm. In addition to its humanitarian, legal, economic, social, cultural and environmental consequences, the wall represents a permanent aggression on the human rights of the Sahrawi people and a huge obstacle to the exercise of their right to self-determination backed by international legality.

The Western Sahara is now a prison in which the Sahrawis are locked. To the west, the ocean, and to the east, the wall of the Moroccan occupation. Currently, there is an international campaign whose aim is to gather all possible international support to force Morocco to demilitarise the wall, neutralise and remove the entire arsenal of destruction that it contains including landmines and explosive remnants of war.

Bringing down the Wall of Shame is a necessary step to restore peace and justice in Western Sahara. It will also be the first step to ensure, once and for all, the respect for the rights of the Sahrawi people and the end of their suffering in exile, and thus the dawning of freedom and independence in Western Sahara.

José Taboada Valdés
President of the Coordination of Spanish Associations of Solidarity with Western Sahara (CEAS-Sahara)