The Fight for Self-determination: A panel discussion in solidarity with Western Sahara

Name: The Fight for Self-determination: A panel discussion in solidarity with Western Sahara
Start: 2025-11-12T07:30:00+13:00
Location: Trades Hall, 126 Vivian Street, Te Aro, Pōneke

Schedule

Wed, 12 Nov, 2025 at 07:30 am

UTC+13:00

Location

Trades Hall, 126 Vivian Street, Te Aro, Pōneke | Wellington, WG

Come and hear stories of self determination, decolonisation, and resistance from the front lines around the world.
Panelists include Hlaila Ahmed (Western Sahara), Eric Mokuma (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Wiki Love (Te Ātiawa,
Taranki Whānui, Ngā Pūhi) and more to be announced.
Hlaila Ahmed is A Sahrawi activist, journalist, photographer and translator. She is Director of the Feminist Gender Group in the refugee camps under the Ministry of Youth and Sport. Hlaila is a member of the Union of Sahrawi Journalists, Writers, and Authors. Hlaila is president and director of KAFA - the association for combatting drug trafficking.
Eric Mokuma - due to ongoing conflict and instability in the DRC Eric was resettled in Aotearoa in 2024 under the Community Refugee Sponsorship Program. Eric is now based in Pōneke where is pursuing his passion for new technology and web design.
Wikitoria Love is a wahine Māori from Te Whanganui-a-Tara, with whakapapa to Te Ātiawa, Taranaki, Ngāruahine, Ngāpuhi, and Ngāti Ruanui. She is an advocate for decolonisation, land sovereignty, and Indigenous-led systems of accountability.
She stands in firm solidarity with indigenous people across the world recognising the shared structures of occupation, dispossession, and state violence imposed on them.
Wikitoria was a kaitiaki during the occupation of Marukaikuru (Shelly Bay), a strategic coastal site on the Miramar Peninsula. The occupation began in 2020 in peaceful resistance to a luxury housing development imposed without the consent of mana whenua. For nearly two years, the whenua became a site of living resistance and reclamation – holding the line for future generations and reconnecting people with their role as kaitiaki. The kaupapa of Marukaikuru remains unfinished, part of a larger movement to defend whenua, whakapapa, and tino rangatiratanga in Aotearoa and everywhere land is treated as a commodity.
More speakers to be announced.
This is a free event but koha is appreciated. All funds will return to the refugee camps with Hlaila.