"It is surprising that mainly Bergen-owned Gearbulk sails for the occupying power Morocco". Read here editorial in one of Norway's biggest newspapers, Bergens Tidende, 29th of June 2008.
This photo, taken in Port of Lyttleton, New Zealand on June 20th, shows the vessel Pacific Victory offloading phosphates from occupied Western Sahara.
Read also: Another Hong Kong vessel involved in plundering.
"EU - and Denmark - can not on the one hand support the UN\'s criticism on Marocco\'s illegal occupation of Western Sahara and simultanously, on the other hand, make a fisheries agreement with Marocco that totally ignores Western Sahara's rights to their own resources" states member of European Parliament\'s Development Committee, Socialist People’s Party's Margrete Auken.
See photographs of the Gearbulk chartered vessel Simge Aksoy discharging phosphates from occupied Western Sahara in Port of Tauranga, New 23rd of June 2008.
Built to keep the Sahrawi from their own land, the berm that bisects Western Sahara is a potent symbol of Morocco's determination to hold on to Africa's last colony in the face of long-standing - but weak - international pressure. Ivan Broadhead reports. South China Morning Post, 11th of May, 2008.
In May, the Hong Kong based company Jinhui Shipping regretted having carried out phosphate shipments from Western Shara, and said they would never do it again. Here is an other Hong Kong company caught red-handed.
Irish Member of European Parliament, Kathy Sinnott, demands that the occupation of Western Sahara must end and that the Morocco-EU fisheries agreement be reviewed before the EU gives any so-called 'Advanced Status' to Morocco.
Western Saharan activists are targeting Australia\'s reliance on their homeland\'s richest natural resource. The region and its phosphate reserves were illegally annexed by neighbouring Morocco in 1975 and activists have travelled to Australia to raise awareness about the continuing occupation. See 7:30 report on Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 9 June 2008 here.
PRESS RELEASE: 29 parliamentarians from UK, Norway and New Zealand this morning sent a letter to the shipping company Gearbulk, urging the company to stop their phosphate shipments from occupied Western Sahara.
Sahrawis in Norway are asking Bergen-owned Gearbulk shipping company to stop trading with Western Sahara. They believe such trade maintains the brutal occupation.
3 stowaways -probably Moroccan- are now in police custody in Norway after arrving in port of Horten, Norway on 3rd of June. They had hidden in a vessel with fish meal from El Aaiun in occupied Western Sahara, and were discovered as the vessel discharged its cargo in Latvia.
Read also: Afrol: Western Sahara-bound fishing vessel hijacked
People from Greenpeace Wednesday afternoon prevented the fishing vessel Nordic IV to leave the harbour in Fiskebäck, Gothenburg, Sweden. Two activists have chained themselves to the vessel's anchoring poles. Gothenburg Post, 11 June 2008
Read more about Gearbulk's involvement in Western Sahara, and the vessel Simge Aksoy here. As of June 2008, the vessel can have transported phosphates from Western Sahara for more than 200,000 million US dollars.
A third international shipping company has bowed into pressure to quit its assignments in ports in occupied Western Sahara. The Hong Kong-based shipping company Jinhui Shipping thus follows Norway\'s two shipping companies Arnesen Shipbrokers and R-Bulk, which have stopped shipping out phosphates from the territory. More are expected to follow. Afrol News, 5 june 2008.