Australia’s Next Labor Government Supporting Slave Holding Insurgents in the Sahara

Why is the main labor movement in Australia – the main force behind the probable next Government of Australia – supporting an organization which still maintains slaves as its workforce? The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), which provides the principal policy, financial, and voting support for the Australian Labor Party (ALP) of Prime Ministerial aspirant Kevin Rudd provides financial aid to POLISARIO, the Algerian-backed insurgency movement which is trying to break the Moroccan Saharan territory away from Moroccan control.

The quiet support which much of the Australian labor movement, and, indeed, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), has given to POLISARIO over the years was shaken when, on May 2, 2007, POLISARIO — Frente Popular de Liberación de Saguía el Hamra y Río de Oro (Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro) — detained two Australian film journalists who had traditionally been supportive of the POLISARIO movement.

The reason? They had discovered that the Algerian-backed insurgency movement kept African slaves in their squalid refugee camps.

Media reporting says that POLISARIO held the two Australian documentary filmmakers, Violeta Ayala and Daniel Fallshaw, for only about five hours before releasing them for filming the slaves. They also confiscated the Australians’ cellphone, but not before a call had gone out to Australian authorities that they had been arrested. Australian sources say that it took strong threats from the Australian Government before the two were released, including the threat to reverse the traditionally supportive approach which the Australian Foreign Affairs Department had traditionally taken with POLISARIO.

POLISARIO, significantly, denied detaining the reporters, but they have told their story widely since leaving Algeria.

But it is significant that the Australian media has not questioned why POLISARIO is able to get donations through the Australian trade union movement, which offers a method for Australian private citizens to make tax-exempt donations to POLISARIO. The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) division called “Australian People for Health, Education and Development Abroad Inc.” (APHEDA), based in Sydney, has a “Union Aid Abroad” movement which works, as it says, “in alliance with the Australia Western Sahara Association”, which is an arm of POLISARIO.

What is equally significant is that the Australian Government has made it difficult for charities in Australia to gain tax-exempt status even when raising funds for Rwandan orphaned children, for example. And yet the ACTU has found a means to offer tax relief on donations to a terrorist organization which actually maintains a workforce of slaves in abject conditions.

Moreover, the same network of support in Australia for POLISARIO has links into the support movement for the (then) marxist FRETILIN movement which fought for the independence of East Timor, and which even after winning Australian support for its independence struggle, has essentially turned its back on Australia since East Timor gained statehood.