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Amanpour

Documentary on Nomadic People of Western Sahara; Moroccan Ambassador to the UN Interviewed

Aired March 05, 2013 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.

Tonight we want to tell you about an important story that almost no one pays attention to or has even ever heard of. In the remote desert land on the northwest side of Africa, a nomadic people see their homes taken from them by an imperial power. Hundreds of thousands are driven away and forced to live as refugees.

This happened in the Western Sahara, a colony of Spain, one of the last colonies in Africa until 1975 when the Moroccans moved in, saying they were reclaiming a territory that had always been theirs.

But the people who live there, known as the Sahrawis, were displaced and they now live under Moroccan rule in Western Sahara or in refugee camps in neighboring Algeria. For years, they've said they're prisoners of a Moroccan occupation, living in dire poverty, sometimes thrown in jail, even tortured in their own country.

To break the stalemate over who controls the Western Sahara, the international community has called for a referendum, a chance for the Sahrawi to vote on independence. And even though Morocco agreed, more than 20 years later, the vote still hasn't happened. This terrible standoff also hasn't received much international attention.

But now finally a spotlight is shining on it, from, of all places, an Oscar-winning actor, a Spanish one, Javier Bardem, who starred most recently as the bad guy in the latest James Bond film, "Skyfall."

As a Spaniard, he says he feels an obligation to set right the humanitarian crisis that his country left behind. He's made a documentary film called "Sons of the Clouds: The Last Colony" to publicize their plight. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAVIER BARDEM, ACTOR AND PRODUCER: I come here as an independent citizen. I'm not affiliated with any political group or represent any government.

It is our duty as citizens to remind our leaders of the responsibilities (inaudible) justice. It is an international disgrace that the relations of (inaudible) live and die in these camps and that (inaudible). (Inaudible) this abuse. But journalists and human rights organizations are not allowed in this (inaudible).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Bardem is now taking his film and his fight to the United Nations and from there to congressional leaders on Capitol Hill. And he joins me now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Mr. Bardem, welcome to the program.

JAVIER BARDEM, ACTOR AND PRODUCER, "SONS OF THE CLOUDS": Thank you.

AMANPOUR: What was your first encounter with the people of Western Sahara? Why did you even go there?

BARDEM: It was 2008 and there's this film festival in the desert, in the refugee camps, called FISahara. And then I went there and we were living there for 10 days in the refugee camps. And of course, I knew about it; I heard about it. But as usually, when you have a real contact, a direct contact with the reality, it changes your mind.

AMANPOUR: But you didn't go to the Western Sahara the first time as a political activist. You went to bring films, to entertain people.

BARDEM: Yes. Yes, and but that's the excuse. In the end, what you go there for is to bring some attention to the conflict.

AMANPOUR: You and your producers found the most incredible video from the archives, showing what they call the Green March, the Moroccans, who, with women, children, unarmed, marched from Morocco straight into the Western Sahara and claimed it.

That was a master stroke, wasn't it?

BARDEM: It's not the march; the march is, of course, it was a great show and a very smart one. It's a very smart move. The problem came after that.

AMANPOUR: One of the issues is what happens next? You know, many of the people of Western Sahara spoke to you and talked about, you know, their hopes for the future and they still hang on. And as you said, they don't have resentment against Spain, that they just want their rights.

But they've seen the Arab Spring. Do they feel that they can ever be part of that?

BARDEM: Well --

AMANPOUR: What do they say to you about that?

BARDEM: And they are very peaceful people, and that's the thing that struck me the most, maybe, that under these horrible circumstances and conditions, they really were able to maintain faith in justice, which sometimes is kind of unnerving, to feel that after 37 years of political malaise (ph), they still believe in it.

AMANPOUR: What do you say with the obvious critics, who'll say, well, you know, here's a movie star, taking on another cause?

BARDEM: Well, I won't say anything. They have the right to say whatever they want. I mean, of course, the thing is beyond -- in any job that we represent, there's a human there and there's a citizen with the right to speak. I mean, it's obvious (ph).

AMANPOUR: And the Moroccans obviously say that, you know, you're biased, that, as you say, you have an opinion, you have an agenda and that you lack the basic facts. What's your answer to that?

BARDEM: Well, I would like to say to that that we -- we've tried for four years in the documentary to have their opinion, the point of view, in the movie. And they canceled every interview that we had. They didn't want to.

We talk with people, very important people, and diplomats and political representatives of Spain, United States, England, France, Austria, South Africa -- I mean, many countries. But not Morocco.

AMANPOUR: When I first met you, when we did an interview before the film was finished how come you took this cause. And you were saying it's a little bit like a hot potato, like nobody wants to discuss it. Do you still feel that way?

BARDEM: Yes, it's a big hot potato because it involves many, many -- I mean, interests, economical interests and realpolitik, as we speak in the movie, you know, which is basically don't do anything about something that you don't know what to do about.

But at the same time, people are dying and people are starving and people are going through a very major crisis of -- crisis of different issues, like human rights, for example. So I just -- I just feel like the movie really show how difficult it is to put people together just to speak about it. No mention the Morocco government, which they didn't even want to be part of it.

AMANPOUR: Well, I very much appreciate you coming in. And as we go out and we will have the Moroccan ambassador to the U.N., I want to play this clip from the documentary, when you were trying to reach the Moroccan ambassador to Spain, to have him participate in your documentary. Look at this clip.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARDEM (from captions): We are going to call Mr. Suleim, Moroccan ambassador to Spain. Let's see what he says.

He is not going to pick up.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (from captions): Maroc Telecom informs you that the voicemail you are calling is disconnected.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Well, you got no response then.

BARDEM: Yes, that's one of the few. And -- but the problem is that I think they betray themselves when you don't speak and it's odd is that you don't want to be part of something that which is very democratic, which is let's put opinions together.

AMANPOUR: Well --

BARDEM: And let's try to make a point out of it. Then you are speaking too loud.

AMANPOUR: We are happy to say that we did manage to get a response. And Morocco's U.N. ambassador will join us with his government's response after a break.

But first, a tale of two maps, the very different way Morocco is viewed from two perspectives.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR (voice-over): This is how the U.N. sees Morocco, with the disputed area of Western Sahara as a separate entity. Now look at how Morocco views itself. On its government website, Morocco claims all of the Western Sahara as its own. We'll be right back.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

AMANPOUR: We've just heard from Oscar-winning actor Javier Bardem about a cause that he holds close to his heart. He's highlighting the plight of Western Sahara, a region that's controlled by Morocco. And Bardem says the people have suffered long enough under what he calls an abusive occupation.

Now he couldn't get any Moroccan officials to take part in his documentary. But we have and we hear Morocco's side.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Mohammed Loulichki is the Moroccan ambassador to the United Nations.

And we are delighted that you could join us. Welcome to the program.

MOHAMMED LOULICHKI, MOROCCAN AMBASSADOR TO THE UN: Thank you very much (inaudible) --

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: The first thing I have to ask is why on Earth would no Moroccan official appear in Javier Bardem's documentary?

LOULICHKI: Well, I think that when Mr. Bardem called the ambassador of Morocco to Madrid, I think that he pushed the wrong button.

AMANPOUR: Do you think?

LOULICHKI: I -- no, no, no, it's not only that I think but I am sure because, judging from the response, it -- he, instead of calling him on his cell phone or the number of the embassy in Madrid, he called him on his Moroccan cell, and you know that -- and we ambassadors, outside, we don't use this --

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: All right. Ambassador, that is a nice try. However --

LOULICHKI: No, this is a --

AMANPOUR: I'm sure that's true. I'm sure it is. However, he tried many, many -- and the producers tried many, many different Moroccans to talk to. And many other people involved in this, from your side, and they say quite clearly that obviously they wanted to get the Moroccan view. And why would you not?

So, again, why did nobody, not just the Moroccan ambassador in Madrid, why did no Moroccan answer their call to at least participate, have your views put in the program?

LOULICHKI: We have all our views put, not only in the United Nations, but on all over the world.

But when you have -- when you have a party that have a definitive position that instead of getting all the elements on which you can base your judgment on a given situation, instead you make first your judgments and then you can -- you will try to have the argument to sustain.

AMANPOUR: So you think the best offense is just defensive?

LOULICHKI: No, no; it's not defensive. It's a conviction that when the possibility of really having a real dialogue with people that know the history of the issue, that know what is at stake --

AMANPOUR: Have you seen the -- have you seen the documentary?

LOULICHKI: No, no, I didn't see it.

AMANPOUR: Oh. You should see it before you make statements about it, because it -- they do actually have a huge number of people in it.

And I am not making a judgment about it. I'm simply saying that there are a lot of interviews in there, from all sides, except for the Moroccan side.

However, we're not going to solve this dispute here.

What I really want to know is, really from your side, what about the referendum, what about the status and the rights of the people in the Western Sahara?

LOULICHKI: We did accept a referendum and we did cooperate with the United Nations to implement a referendum between 1991 and 2000. In 2000, the impossibility of getting the electoral body conducted the United Nations to state and to conclude that the referendum is not applicable for obvious reasons.

First, when you cannot identify the electoral body, you cannot have a genuine referendum. Secondly, a referendum is not the route when it comes to dealing with these issues.

AMANPOUR: Wait, wait, wait, you agreed to it, the Kingdom of Morocco agreed to it and it's never been implemented and, look, we can talk about not knowing how many electors there are. We can talk about all sorts of logistics.

But in the end, those are details. The real question is why wasn't this referendum that was agreed by the king, by the parties, by the United Nations, supported by the United States of America, the president talked about what a courageous act it was for the king of Morocco, hasn't been implemented.

And let me play you then a sound bite, a part of an interview from this documentary, from the person who was heading the organization set up to monitor and implement this referendum. This is what he says about the Moroccans, that actually you didn't want to have the referendum and did everything possible not to have it. Listen to what he said, then you can respond.

LOULICHKI: OK.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRANK RUDDY, DEPUTY CHAIRMAN MINURSO REFERENDUM FOR WESTERN SAHARA: There's certain words that the -- that the Sahrawis use that the Moroccans cannot pronounce. They set up training facilities to teach the Moroccans how to say these words in the Sahrawi fashion so that they could pose as Sahrawis and then, you know, get themselves enrolled as voters and things like that.

The number of dirty tricks and absolutely unethical and unscrupulous things that the Moroccans did is amazing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: That's a pretty harsh indictment. What's your response to that?

LOULICHKI: Well, I think I guess -- I think it's not -- it was Mr. Frank Ruddy?

AMANPOUR: Yes, it was, yes.

LOULICHKI: But if you go back to his declaration that he made immediately after the MINURSO, the declaration that he made in the first committee, I think you can -- you can --

AMANPOUR: What are you saying?

LOULICHKI: -- what his position -- I think he left Salayun (ph) with lots of bitterness and he has a fixed idea on how things will be conducted. And when things did not go his way, I think he has taken a certain position, hostile to Morocco. AMANPOUR: Here there was a referendum decided for this issue. And you have Frank Ruddy, who was in charge of the organization for a number of years.

You have John Bolton, who was a very strong U.S.-U.N. ambassador, who says that, you know, the Moroccans flooded the Western Sahara; King Hassan determined it would not happen. You know, they signed it but they never implemented it. So I guess, at this point --

LOULICHKI: Sorry. We did not flood the Sahara.

AMANPOUR: Are you saying they're lying?

LOULICHKI: Absolutely.

No, no, I know what I'm talking about. You cannot conduct a referendum with 51 percent and leave the 49 percent. It's the -- it's the recipe for civil war and we don't want this to happen.

We want a negotiated settlement in which we will apply -- we will apply (inaudible) determination (ph). We will negotiate and at the end of the day, we will go to the population and put the results of our negotiation and say, do you accept this outcome?

This is what we want to achieve because in our part of the world, we have so many challenges that do not challenge only Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and the Sahara countries, but also challenge Europe and the United States. Terrorism is gaining ground in this part of Africa that is neighboring to Morocco.

And we want to take all the necessary measures. And one of them, one of them is to speed up the negotiations to end the ordeal of the population in (inaudible), because we want to have them back.

AMANPOUR: Ambassador, are you not worried that if this is not dealt with in a just way, that you're going to have people who have no faith anymore in politics? That you're going to have young people from the Western Sahara who decide to take up arms, as some of them have said they will?

Is this not simply self-defeating for Morocco?

LOULICHKI: Do you think that we are not sensitive to the humanitarian situations? They are brothers and sisters of me, my wife and my children.

AMANPOUR: Well --

LOULICHKI: And we want them to come back to contribute to building the new democratic Morocco where all human rights for all will be guaranteed and --

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: You talk about human rights, but obviously human rights is not part of the resolution in MINURSO, and there are many people who criticize that and don't understand why that would be the case.

LOULICHKI: We have 15 peacekeeping operations in the United Nations; six of them do not have a human rights (inaudible) --

AMANPOUR: And one of them is yours. Is that something to be proud of?

LOULICHKI: No, it's not to be proud of.

AMANPOUR: OK. Let me play you --

(CROSSTALK)

LOULICHKI: The United Nations is saying that Morocco has a mechanism for protection of human rights (inaudible) --

AMANPOUR: -- let me play you this sound bite, because human rights activists and officials say that it is one of the most oppressive occupations ever, the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, with wholescale human rights violations.

Let me play you a part of an interview of a woman from Western Sahara that talks about it.

LOULICHKI: Yes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMINETU HAIDAR, HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST (from captions): The stripped me from my family's home at 3:30 am and went missing for four years in a secret place. During this period, you can't even imagine. We were blindfolded for four years, day and night. We couldn't sleep at night because of the fear caused by constant attempts of rape. It was very hard to be mistreated, insulted, tortured.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Well, you saw that picture of this lady, who had been beaten up and abused by your forces there.

And she says that that wasn't the worst of it, that there was a young man in a nearby cell, who was tortured to death, simply, she says, for refusing to accept, as she says, that Western Sahara was Moroccan, and for refusing to hail the king. "The king is not my king," he said, and he was tortured to death, she says.

I mean, that's not peaceful. That's not human rights.

LOULICHKI: I'm not dismissing a possible violation of human rights. It happens all over the world. But what it doesn't happen is that these violation are not redressed. Morocco in 1999 went through scrutinizing 50 years of violation of human rights.

We had the Truth Commission (ph) that compensated tens of thousands of people, including -- including Ms. Aminetu Haidar. She got $60,000 in terms of compensations and she got a job also in terms of compensations. So I think one has to see the --

AMANPOUR: But you're not denying that there are massive abuses?

LOULICHKI: I am not -- I am not denying that there are isolated -- I'm not saying that there were no gross violations in Morocco, including in the Sahara.

AMANPOUR: Well, that's not what the human rights community says; it's not what the U.N. says. And right now, the U.S. -- especially the Congress -- appears to be getting more and more sensitized to this. And since 2011, the United States has started to link aid to Morocco, military aid, to improvements in the Western Sahara.

Now, they haven't been specific and I'm sure they haven't, you know, enacted any punitive actions.

Do you think they will? Are you worried that eventually you'll lose, that you'll lose U.S. support, because they are your big backers in all of this, in the U.N. and everywhere?

LOULICHKI: I'm not worried, because I know what are the achievements of my country for the last 10 years, that Morocco has developed a culture of human rights, that Morocco is making progress and that we can trust the mechanism, the domestic mechanisms, of human rights in Morocco to deal with any violations.

AMANPOUR: Ambassador, it's good of you to have come in; you didn't want to take part in the other documentary, and I'm very glad that you were able to talk to us. And we will keep watching this situation.

LOULICHKI: I'd be always ready to come back and discuss with you --

AMANPOUR: Excellent. We will watch and we will continue to report from on the ground there.

LOULICHKI: Thank you very much.

AMANPOUR: And while Morocco is feeling the winds of change that have swept across North Africa, there is one enduring image of that country that lives on. It's on the silver screen. That story in a moment.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, we've focused on the struggle for self-determination in Western Sahara as depicted in a documentary by Oscar- winner Javier Bardem.

But an earlier film put Morocco's largest city, Casablanca, on the map many, many years ago in the Hollywood classic that stars Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. It was a time of war and refugees as well, also desperate characters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLAUDE RAINS, ACTOR, "CAPTAIN LOUIS RENAULT": Everybody to leave here immediately. This cafe is closed until further notice. Clear the room at once.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

HUMPHREY BOGART, ACTOR, "RICK BLAINE": How can you close me up? On what grounds?

"RENAULT": I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your winnings.

"RENAULT": Oh, thank you very much.

Everybody out at once.

AMANPOUR (voice-over): That was fiction. But Casablanca was also the site of a wartime conference between Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was there that the Allies agreed to fight on until Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: It is that kind of determination and leadership that's required now to end the crisis in Western Sahara for all sides.

That's it for tonight's program. Meantime, you can always contact us on our website, amanpour.com. Thanks for watching and goodbye from New York.

END