Grief in Western Sahara as national symbol has passed away.
Mariam Hassan has during several decades articulated the Saharawi people's resistance and sufferings.
Hassan was born into a family of musicians in 1958, in what was then called Spanish Sahara. IN 1975, when Moroco and Mauritania occupied Western Sahara, she and her family fled to the Saharawi refugee camps, where she first served as a nurse. Three of her brothers died during the war.
For a number of years, she has travelled on tours to music festivas with her traditional and highly political blues. She has been a fundamentally important ambassador and source of inspiration for the Saharawi people.
For more than ten years, she fought a private battle against cancer, and many of her songs cover that topic.
Two more Norwegians, who travelled to occupied Western Sahara to learn about Morocco’s controversial energy projects in the territory, were detained by Moroccan police this afternoon and deported.
Today, 25 Moroccan police officers showed up to expel two Norwegians from occupied Western Sahara. The two had traveled to learn what the Sahrawis think about Morocco's controversial renewable energy projects on occupied land.
Sahrawi civil society welcomes a new report from the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearance, and urges exhumations and identification of victims in the Morocco-occupied Western Sahara.
This week, Morocco is for the first time placed under review in the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances.