but here are the facts
Morocco is already testing its power. At September's World Fertilizer Conference in San Francisco, Morocco's ascendancy was the main topic of conversation. Asked about OCP, trader Mark Mangassarian answered with a question: "Oh, you mean the guys who are trying to drive up phosphate prices the most?" In contrast to commodities such as oil and corn, whose prices are set largely on futures exchanges, phosphate prices are still negotiated the old-fashioned way: in closed meetings between buyers and sellers. Many such meetings took place at the San Francisco conference. Mangassarian, who is assistant vice-president for sales at Nitron International in Stamford, Conn., spent three days hopping from suite to suite at the Westin St. Francis on Union Square. Though the industry average for diammonium phosphate fertilizer (DAP) has been hovering at around $500 this summer, the poker-faced executives he sat down with weren't willing to go below $550. A few weeks later, Mangassarian came to see it their way, and is paying $560.
OCP's tough negotiating tactics have irritated many in the industry. "You try to talk to them, and they don't answer. They've always been like that. That's their strategy," says Taoufik Meddeb, who buys sulfur for Groupe Chimique Tunisien, another state-owned company and OCP's biggest competitor in North Africa. Late one afternoon at the conference, Meddeb was slumped on a couch in the hotel's lobby, recounting how much the phosphate world had changed over his 30-year career—everything, he said, except for the Moroccans' secrecy. Indeed, it seems as though everyone wanted to talk about Morocco except for the Moroccans themselves, who mostly deflected questions. "God just put the phosphate there," said Jamal Bensari, a member of OCP's delegation. "It is our only resource, and it is our responsibility."
<snip>
Opinions differ on the degree to which OCP is run by royal decree. Called the King of the Poor for his efforts to raise Morocco's living standards, Mohammed VI's $2 billion in assets places him seventh on Forbes' list of the richest royals, far behind Sheikh Mohammed of Dubai but well ahead of the Prince of Monaco. Although he is not technically the head of state, he has control of the country as both a secular and religious leader. He appoints the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, and has the power to overrule or dissolve the elected Parliament. His handsome portrait adorns the first page of OCP's annual reports, and his face appears in nearly every home and coffee shop. (The King also holds a controlling stake of the ONA Group, a publicly traded holding company that owns near-monopolies in Moroccan sugar and steel.) The Moroccan Embassy did not respond to requests for interviews with the King.
Although the King is liberal by the standards of Middle Eastern royalty (opponents called the rule of his father, Hassan II, the "years of lead" for its frequent killings and disappearances), he continues to be criticized for crackdowns on the press and for human rights abuses, including the fatal shooting in October of a 14-year-old Sahrawi boy at a checkpoint in Western Sahara.
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/magazine/content/10_46/b4203080895976.htm#p3
Morocco has been repeatedly condemned and criticized for its actions in Western Sahara by several international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as:
Amnesty International[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]
Human Rights Watch[16][17]
World Organization Against Torture[18][19][20]
Freedom House[21]
Reporters Without Borders[22][23][24][25][26][27][28]
International Committee of the Red Cross
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights[29][30][31]
Derechos Human Rights[32]
Defend International[33][34]
Front Line Defenders[35][36][37][38][39][40][40][41][42][43][44]
International Federation of Human Rights[45][46][47][48][49][50]
Society for Threatened Peoples[51][52][53][54][55]
Norwegian Refugee Council[56]
Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights[57][58][59][60][61][62][63]
Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies[64][65][66]
Arabic Network for Human Rights Information[67][68][69][70]
Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network[71]
<snip>
The "disappeared"
In 2010 around 520 Sahrawi civilians remained "disappeared" by Moroccan forces, according to human rights groups; some estimate that the total number of "disappeared" could be as high as 1,500.[93] In the past, Morocco denied that any such political prisoners existed, but in 1991 released nearly 200 "disappeared" prisoners, many of whom had been held in secret detention centers since the mid-1970s. Since then, there have been no further releases of "disappeared" prisoners. Amnesty International stated in a 1999 report that:
“ "The men, women and even children who "disappeared" in Western Sahara came from all walks of life. Many were detained because of their alleged pro-independence activities, support for the Polisario Front, and opposition to Morocco's control of the Western Sahara. Others, including elderly people and children, "disappeared" because of their family links with known or suspected opponents to Moroccan government policy in Western Sahara." ”
—Amnesty International report 1999
.
In May 2005, the remains of 43 Sahrawi "disappeared" were exhumed from secret prisons on the south of Morocco (Kalaat Maguna, Tagunit). They were detained in Western Sahara (Laayoune, Smara) & southern Morocco (Tan Tan, Assa) in the 1970s & 1980s.[94]
In 2008, the head of CORCAS & former leader of the Sahrawi National Union Party, Khelli Henna Ould Rachid declared:
"Some Moroccan army officers have made what might be called war crimes against prisoners outside the scope of the war ... Many civilians were launched into space from helicopters or buried alive simply for being Sahrawis".[95]
The same year (4 January) construction workers uncovered a mass grave with approximately 15 skeletons in Smara, in former military barracks built during the 1970s, the period during which many Sahrawis disappeared or were murdered by Moroccan authorities.[96]
Resulting from the "Reconciliation tribunals" in Morocco in 2005, some graves of political dissidents of Hassan II regime (Sahrawis & Moroccans) were uncovered, although the responsible persons of those crimes have never been judged or their identities revealed. Also, the testimonies of witnesses have not been published yet.[97]
In March 2010, a new grave was found by Bou Craa workers on a phosphate mine with 7 corpses, supposedly Sahrawi nomads killed by Moroccan forces during the mid-1970s.[98]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Western_Sahara
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