Sanna Ghotbi and Benjamin Ladraa
11/07/2023 17:30 pm
Waseda University, Building 3 Room 801
Sanna and Benjamin are two Swedish human rights defenders biking one lap around the world to raise awareness about Africa’s last colony Western Sahara, which has been occupied by Morocco since 1975, and the indigenous people, the Sahrawis, suffer grave human rights violations. Because Morocco forbids journalists from entering, there is little knowledge of the situation of Western Sahara under occupation. To change that, Sanna and Benjamin are now biking through 40 countries for over two years. In this event, they will talk about their tour and Western Sahara.
With the true spirit of a Majlis you are all most welcome to join but to enable us to judge and manage numbers we kindly request you to book by filling in the registration form.
*Please be informed that this event will be conducted as an in-person ONLY gathering.
Sanna Ghotbi is a human rights activist from Gothenburg, Sweden who has worked with a range of issues. She was elected in the city council of Gothenburg where she put forward many policy changes for the rights of undocumented migrants, unaccompanied refugee youth and women suffering domestic abuse. She has worked with indigenous groups in Ecuador and Colombia. She co-founded a democracy lab that works with promoting participatory democracy, increasing citizen’s power of local decision-making in places like New York, Chicago and Sweden focusing on underfunded communities, youth and people of color. Both her parents are political activists from Kurdistan, Iran and Sanna is working on a book about their life and has the goal of uniting the Kurdish, Palestinian and Sahrawi struggle together, along with all other occupied groups. Her main passion is to change the way democracy works so that those that are most affected by political decisions are the ones making them.
Benjamin Ladraa is a human rights activist from Ume?, Sweden. He walked 4800 km during 11 months from Sweden to Palestine to raise awareness about the occupation. He did a speaking tour in the US and UK about his journey that got major attention. He biked 2000 km from Gothenburg to Abisko to raise fund for prosthetics to disabled children in Gaza through the PCRF – Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. He walked 500 km from Gothenburg to Stockholm to advocate for refugee rights in Sweden. During the pandemic he organized a series of webinars about Western Sahara and intersectional solidarity which are available on Solidarity Rising’s YouTube Channel. His main passion is advocating for oppressed people’s and working to unify struggles in order to strengthen movements for justice.
