Gorilla Radio blog: Canada's Hand in the Plunder of Western Sahara Revealed

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Canada's Hand in the Plunder of Western Sahara Revealed

Canadian complicity in illegal resource trade from Western Sahara detailed in new report

by Friends of Western Sahara, Victoria

Two of Canada’s leading agricultural fertilizer companies have been revealed as being among the largest importers of phosphate mineral rock from occupied Western Sahara. The trade is directly contributing to Morocco’s illegal occupation of the territory, considered to be Africa’s last colony after Spain abandoned it in 1975.

The m.v. Olympus finished unloading this week and is still in Vancouver Harbour, the m.v. Ultra Saskatoon is making its way north along the US west coast: Agrium Inc. may now be achieving its planned one million tonnes annual import of phosphates, the largest continuing volume by any company, anywhere.

The scope of Canadian involvement is detailed in a report made public today by the non-governmental organization Western Sahara Resource Watch (WSRW) entitled P is for Plunder. The complete report can be found online at: http://www.wsrw.org/a105x2905 and it lists the buyers, volumes, values and shipments from Morocco's export of phosphate rock from the territory. International law and the Geneva Conventions on War forbid the commercial exploitation of resources in occupied lands by the occupier.

The report presents the results of the tracking and analyzing of 98 bulk vessels over two years which called into the Atlantic coast of Western Sahara. During 2012 and 2013, Agrium Inc. and Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan Inc. imported numerous shipments into the port of Vancouver and Louisiana valued at more than $ 200 million. Although PotashCorp is listed as a Canadian company, it imports its illegal purchases to its plant in Louisiana, USA.

The report describes the scale of phosphate exports from Western Sahara and notes that half the original population of Saharawi remains in refugee camps with no access to the benefits of the trade. In 2013 Morocco sold 2.2 million tonnes at an estimated value of $330 million exported in 48 bulk vessels. The phosphates are mined in Boucraa and exported by Office Chérifien des Phosphates, a company wholly-owned by the Moroccan government.

“We estimate that Potash Corporation paid the Moroccan government more than $100 million in 2013 alone for a resource which is stolen from its legitimate owners, the Saharawi people. By doing this, PotashCorp is directly contributing to prolong the sufferings of the Saharawi, and complicates their legitimate efforts to gain independence, as they have right to”, states Erik Hagen, chair of WSRW.

The UN considers Western Sahara as the last colony in Africa. The phosphate rock of the territory is illegally exploited by the Moroccan government in Western Sahara, a territory it occupies under armed force and with widely reported human rights abuses. The exports are Morocco’s main source of income from the occupied territories. Representatives of the Saharawi people have been consistently outspoken against the trade, both in the UN, and to Canada’s Agrium Inc. and to Potash Corporation.

In the presentation of the report, Victoria Friends of Western Sahara joined with the Brussels-based and Australian Western Sahara Association in calling on corporations and governments to end the import trade, until human rights in Western Sahara are respected and the long-promised United Nations process for the Saharawi people to choose their political-legal status under the long accepted right of self-determination is achieved.

Theresa Wolfwood of Victoria recently visited the refugee camps in Algeria where Saharawi have been waiting for thirty-eight years to return to their homeland and be united in an independent state with their friends and families who are suffering under the harsh and repressive regime of Morocco. She says;

“It is shocking that our Canada Pension Plan invests in PotashCorp and Agrium, helping to perpetuate the illegal exploitation of resources and injustice to the Saharawi.”

She notes that the pension plans of Norway and Sweden have divested from PotashCorp for these reasons.