On 31st October, to mark the 34th anniversary of the occupation of Western Sahara, campaigners held a vigil outside the Moroccan embassy in London where they called for an end to the current crackdown on peaceful activists and the release of seven prominent human rights defenders currently imprisoned, awaiting sentence from a military court in Rabat. Their ‘crime’ was to visit the refugee camps where around 165,000 Saharawi refugees have lived for three decades. The arrests have been condemned by politicians and human rights organisations around the world including Amnesty International.