The United Nations Security Council voted Wednesday to extend the mandate of MINURSO, the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara, a territory in northwestern Africa that’s been occupied by Morocco since 1975. Thousands of Western Sahara’s indigenous people—the Sahrawi—have since been tortured, imprisoned, killed and disappeared while resisting the Moroccan occupation. Wednesday’s U.N. vote comes ahead of negotiations scheduled for December between Morocco and the Sahrawi liberation movement known as Polisario Front, along with Algeria and Mauritania. They’ll be the first such talks since 2012. Democracy Now! was able to break the Moroccan media blockade and report from Western Sahara; you can go to our website at democracynow.org to watch our special report, “Four Days in Western Sahara: Africa’s Last Colony.”