What does it mean to live under colonialism today? Despite numerous UN resolutions affirming the right to self-determination of the Saharawi people, Morocco with international support continues its illegal and atrocious occupation. From about the age of 14, Saharawi journalist and activist Malainin Lakhal has been fighting for his people’s liberation. In Nairobi this week, he told Pambazuka News editor Henry Makori his experience.

Morocco this week stormed out of the Africa-Arab Summit in Equatorial Guinea to protest the presence of Western Sahara, which it has forcefully and illegally occupied for over 40 years. This incident yet again demonstrates Morocco’s hidden agenda in seeking re-admission to the African Union: to use the continental body to deny the Saharawi people their universally recognized right to self-determination.

For the first time ever, a Moroccan king delivers a nationalist expansionist speech from a foreign country without any obvious reason that would explain this choice. The king is not a victim of a coup nor is his country threatened by any peril that may have explained such a choice.

Morocco appears to a adopt a schizophrenic behavior towards the Saharawi Republic by officially sitting down in international forums side by side with the Saharawi delegation. Yet behind closed doors it continues to wage a campaign to discredit the rights of the Saharawi for full independence