SAHARAWI WOMAN SAYS TO THE INTERNATIONAL PRESS IN SIDNEY " I AM NOT A SLAVE"

Saharawi woman refugee and preschool teacher Fetim Sellami is a central characterin the Australian documentary Stolen, a film set in the refugee camps insouth-west Algeria that have been home to 165,000 Saharawi refugees sincetheir country, Western Sahara, was invaded by Morocco in 1975.

*However, when she and her husband, Baba Hocine Mahfoud, attended its June11 premiere at the Sydney Film Festival, they did not receive red carpettreatment, despite the long distance they had travelled.The film alleges that slavery is widespread in the camps and that Sellamiand her family are slaves. She came to Australia to expose the film as afraud.“The film-makers were surprised, but not happy, to see me because they knewI’d tell the truth”, she told *Green Left Weekly.*She said she felt personally betrayed. “I believed the film-makers’ goodintentions and I treated them well … I opened my house and my heart to them… I felt very bad [that] my dignity was attacked with baseless allegations.”Moreover, she was concerned the film undermined the cause of the Saharawipeople’s struggle against the Moroccan occupation. “Morocco has takenadvantage of the film’s allegations [which are] the first time everallegations of slavery in the camps have been made.”She said that the film’s co-directors, Violetta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw, hadled her to believe they were making “a documentary on family separation, afilm about the story of my [UN-facilitated] reunion with my mother, whichwould help the cause of Western Sahara, highlighting the suffering caused bythe Moroccan occupation”.However, “on their second visit I began to realise they’d changed course.They started asking questions about slavery … I’m not sure whether they cameup with the idea themselves or had external influence”.She sent a signed statement to the filmmakers, withdrawing her consent to befeatured in the documentary. The film-makers ignored her wishes, claimingshe was being manipulated by the Saharawi independence movement, Polisario,which runs the camps.She then sent a video statement to Screen Australia, which funded the film a$300,000 public grant. But again her statement was ignored.

The true story of Sellami’s separation from her mother is typical of theSaharawi experience. She was three years old and at a neighbour’s house when the brutal Moroccaninvasion occurred. Her mother was out of town and the neighbour, a womancalled Deido, took Sellami with her when she fled the invaders, effectivelybecoming her foster mother. Deido left behind her own 3 year old daughter who happened to be withDeido’s mother at the time of the invasion.However, in a synopsis posted on the Documentary Australia Foundation’swebsite in September 2008, Ayala and Fallshaw claimed “it wasn’t the territorial conflict that separated Fetim from her mother. Fetim was born aslave.”They claimed black Saharawi are held as slaves by their lighter-skinnedcompatriots who “made the decision to flee to the refugee camps in Algeriataking their slaves with them, separating the black families once again”.Ayala and Fallshaw’s cinematographer, Carlos Gonzalez disputed theallegations. “During the three weeks I spent there with them I sawabsolutely no indication of slavery”, he told the *7.30 Report *on June 15. He returned to the camps by himself and spoke to members of Sellami’s familywho said they had been misquoted and mistranslated. Some black Saharawi mensaid the film makers had paid them to say they were slaves on camera.“No, we didn’t pay them any money”, Ayala told the *7.30 Report,* but thenconceded: “Like, we gave them money when they came to Mauritania, we gavethem money to go back to the camps.”She gave no explanation as to why slaves would want money to return to theircruel masters.She also denied dialogue in the film had been mistranslated.However, the *7.30 Report* had sequences of the film translated by AlJazeera television. In one scene, in which the film-makers’ subtitles showSellami’s mother and sister confirming that she is a slave, the Al Jazeeratranslation shows that they were in fact discussing the film-makers’misconceptions on the issue.How involved the Moroccan dictatorship was in making the film is unclear. However, Ayala and Fallshaw admit that some of the footage was transportedin Moroccan diplomatic bags. The film’s co-directors, and producer Tom Zubrycki, accused the film’scritics — including Sellami, Mahfoud and Gonzalez — of being manipulated byPolisario. They imply Polisario is complicit in slavery.*GLW* journalist Margarita Windisch visited the camps in 2008 as part of adelegation to the congress of the Saharawi trade union confederation,UGTSARIO. She told *GLW*: “I certainly saw no evidence of slavery. If theywanted to make a film about slavery perhaps they should have investigatedconditions of phosphate workers in the Moroccan-occupied zone. Australiancompanies are involved in this.”Sellami and Mahfoud’s real lives give credence to Polisario’s claim to havethe best-run refugee camps in the world. Mahfoud studied electronicengineering in Cuba and now works in Madrid.One of their four children has studied in Spain. The family spend theirholidays together, either in Spain or in the camps. Their level ofinternational travel should dispel any notion that they are slaves.When Sellami and Mahfoud confronted Ayala and Fallshaw during thequestion-and-answer session at the premiere, they were jeered and heckled bythe film-makers’ supporters.“This film is the worst thing that’s ever been made on Western Sahara, a biglie”, Sellami told *GLW*. “If the film-makers wanted fame or money theyshould have tried in an honourable way.”