Thou Shall Not Blog

Another prisoner of opinion, Mohamed Erraji, has been jailed (then released) in Morocco, and again for a crime of lèse-majesté.

A Moroccan court in the coastal city of Agadir has sentenced in September 08, 2008, Mohamed Erraji, a journalist and blogger, to two years in prison and to a fine of around 600 US dollars. Erraji was convicted for "failing to respect the sacrality of the monarch" under article 41 of the Moroccan press code.

In an article he published on HesPress (ar), an irreverent Moroccan electronic magazine, Erraji criticized the king's policy of rewarding people who adulate and praise him, much to the detriment of the common sense and public interest. Mohamed wrote (Original arabic version here - English translation from Global voices here by Amira Al Husseini) :

We need to admit that what has destroyed our country and made it plummet to this embarrassing level in all international rankings, is this economy of dispersing gratuities, which benefits the lucky sons and daughters of this country and overlooks the rest. Of course, we don't need to use the larger than life terms used by politicians to understand what this means. It simply means that some people can take the rights of others unjustly! Transportation licenses and nobility titles which the King distributes on citizens who send him letters, written using the same phrases used by beggars lining sidewalks, fall under this category of gratuities. Countries which respect their citizens do not turn them into beggars under the feet of nobility.

Instead, they develop factories and workshops for them to work in and earn their living with dignity. Even if we assume that such gratuities are only dispersed to deserving citizens such as the special needs and poor, which is impossible at any rate, this isn't anything that makes Moroccan citizens proud. The right to work, health care and education are granted by the Constitution. Therefore, the state should provide decent means of living for its citizens - other than humiliating them in this shameless manner.

During the 10-minute trial, the defendant wasn't allowed and has not been able to have a defense attorney.

The hilarious side of the story is that the same iniquitous and corrupt court, later retracted and allowed for a provisional release on bail of Mr Erraji pending his appeal of the judgment against him.

Reporters Without Borders: “We are relieved by Erraji’s provisional release. The Moroccan judicial system must now hear his appeal in a proper manner. We hope the outcome will be fair. Erraji is not guilty of insulting the king. We hope the court will not uphold the prison sentence.”

Erraji's lawyer who filed the appeal's request later declared that his client's "provisional release is the result of strong pressure. The decision came from a very high level."

What else indeed could have helped for the release of Erraji other than a "high-level" intervention in a judicial system under direct orders from the executive... namely the monarch?

CPJ noted that "press freedom in Morocco has notably regressed in recent years. Independent journalists have been the targets of a series of politicized court cases, financial pressures, and harassment from authorities. The country’s restrictive press code criminalizes offending the king, “defaming” the monarchy, insulting Islam or state institutions, and offending Morocco’s “territorial integrity.”"

In a fatalistic and pessimistic tone (not without some sense of derision,) Erraji closes his article writing:

[W]e should delay our dreams of a Morocco of equality and equal opportunities until the reign of Mohammad the Seventh, which will follow after that of Hassan the Third, who is the Crown Prince at present.

The idiotic and anachronistic trepidations of the Moroccan regime, are becoming disturbingly worrying. For how can any reasonable mind believe that such a medieval system of systematic censure ever work in face of a -definitely- awakening nation, thirsty of freedom, equality and genuine democracy?

This blog will then be on a symbolic strike, Monday, September the fifteenth in solidarity with Mohamed Erraji who might be momentarily free, but who hasn't yet got off the hook. Moroccan bloggers and their friends around the place are joining efforts to name and shame the Moroccan government and put pressure on those who can put an end to this parody of justice. Please join this effort by publishing links to Erraji's blog and to that of his supporting team.

Latest Update: Another example of the worrying state of affairs we're talking about, this news I've come across while browsing through Moroccan online newspapers: A member of the royal family, one of the King's ants husband, Hassan Alyaaqubi, has opened fire on a policemen who stopped Alyaaqubi for a misdemeanour traffic violation. The affair has apparently provoked a stir in the Moroccan street. What the hell is going on?

Moroccan Extraordinary Renditions

The British high court has Friday, given David Miliband, the foreign secretary, a week to disclose documents related to the detention in 2004 (abduction shall we say) of a British resident, Binyam Mohamed currently detained at Guantánamo Bay.

As reported by the Guadrian.co.uk and according to Mohamed's team of defense, the man "was detained in Pakistan in 2002 and secretly rendered to Morocco, where he claims he was tortured by having his penis cut with a razor blade. He was also detained and interrogated in Afghanistan before being taken to Guantánamo Bay in 2004, where he is awaiting trial."

The anti-torture organization Reprieve, deplored the British government's reluctance to communicate documents which may prove Binyam's innocence and/or maltreatment. The head of the Organization declared that “The British government effectively says that a British resident’s right to a fair trial is less important than avoiding embarrassing the Bush Administration, and we’ll just gloss over the fact that he was tortured. But British national security cannot ever be enhanced by torture. To borrow from President Bill Clinton’s speech two days ago – the world is more impressed by the power of our example, than the example of America abusing its power. To suggest otherwise is, surely, Britain going back to the role of poodle.”

And how on earth shall I describe the despicable attitude of my own government? I'm speechless and abhorred by the Moroccan authorities' attitude, abasing themselves into a vulgar executor of America's dirty business. How is that for democracy and human rights which the regime is glossing over ad-nauseum?

By traveling freely across cultures

those in search of the human essence

may find a space for all to sit...

Here a margin advances. Or a centre

retreats. Where East is not strictly east,

and West is not strictly west,

where identity is open onto plurality,

not a fort or a trench

Mahmud Darwish
1941 - 2008

Agnostic What?

I've been touring Morocco this summer and I spent quite a pleasant time rediscovering my own country. I thought I would embark into an intellectual as well as physical journey, setting about to enquire into how much change has occurred since I've been away. I was interested in the subtlest forms of change, shifts in attitudes, the trends, amongst the youngsters of course and in details of everyday life's interactions. I'm not pretending to have neither the knowledge nor the ambition of a professional sociologist, but I had a keen desire in keeping up to date with the environment in which I grew up, and with the people I consider most close to me. That's a feeling I wouldn't have imagined experiencing: the sheer anxiety of loosing track with home.

Life standards have undeniably improved in Morocco compared to some not very long time ago. Great disparity in the distribution of wealth of course with ridiculously wealthy people, affording levels of luxury and opulence seldom seen in western countries. Centralized power based on the archaic (but not un-sophisticated) system of governance called the Makhzen... etc. etc. Thinks we (Moroccan bloggers and many friends of this blog) have extensively talked about and tried humbly to analyse. Not much really has changed from this view point unsurprisingly. But that's not what I was interested in probing into anyway.

The interesting thing I detected was a new and interesting way of imagining one's identity in a country like Morocco, torn between tradition and modernity, the west and the east, the north and the south, Arabhood and Berberhood, staying and leaving, accepting and revolting, obedience and dissent, Arabic and French.

Not once, not twice but numerous times I found myself agreeing with fellow countrymen who refused to be considered neither as traditionalists nor as ultra-liberals. And the question of how to put a name, a label on this 'middle group' of Arab/Berber/Muslim/secularists kept haunting me.

"I'm an Agnostic... Muslim" said one of my interlocutors. Agnostic what? How on earth one can on the one hand doubt the existence of a Superior Being and on the other, keep a title of belief? It's like saying that the Pope is planning for a wedding or that Mr Bush has got a brain. Not that I have a problem with people believing or not believing. That's none of my business. But I first thought, unless one adheres to the Orwellian principle of Doublethink, reconciling both things was simply unworkable. Unless... unless... Unless one doesn't consider Islam as a mere system of belief but rather as a cultural matrix. In other words, I can be a Muslim if I choose to keep up to Islam as a culture, a civilization, an identity, regardless of whether I believe in God or not, or whether I'm a practicing Muslim or not. Of course! That is brilliant!

But then I thought: that's quite a controversial topic in a region of the world where freedom of thought is not common place.

The impression I have today is that Muslims (in the agnostic sense of the term), like European Christians before them, have seen the horrors resulting from religion meddling into politics and into their lives and freedoms, and from religious fanaticism and subsequent violence, and have started a very slow, very patient semi-conscious process of obliterating this slippery way leading inexorably to fascism and totalitarianism. On the other hand, many have also well understood that unless one clings to his or her own culture and identity and avoids self-loathing, individuals and the whole social structure runs the risk of permanent apathy and unproductiveness.

Pity the Nation

The puppet regime in Beirut -officially led by Mr Seniora but remotely controlled by Mr Saad al-Hariri and his Western mentors-, which now has become a laughing-stock in the whole middle-east, has been forced to back down in the face of a perfectly organized Lebanese resistance led by Hezbollah, but comprising elements from all parts and groups of the Lebanese society.

Here is the account of the valuable correspondent of CounterPunch, Franklin Lamb.

Candid Jamaï

Aboubakr Jamaï, the former editor and publisher of Le Journal Hebdo (Casablanca), was hosted yesterday by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars under the subject matter: "Morocco: A Stalled Democratization Process?"

Excerpts from the candid discussion that ensued can be found here.

May Day

Remembering the dead of Casablanca

and wishing for a better and more

dignified tomorrow for all fellow workers

around the place.

"How Do Arab Regimes Modernize Authoritarianism"

"Since when have you compelled people to enslavement, since their mothers birthed them free."
Omar Ben al-Khattab

The Arab world is the one single region in the world that has little if not changed at all since François Georges-Picot and Mark Sykes determined its majors outlines according to their government's respective spheres of influence, prior to the downfall of the Ottoman Empire. Throughout the past century, the established dictatorial and regressive regimes have brought very little progress to their people.


For example, and according to UN Human Development Program's latest reports on the region, "the number of books translated in the Arab world is one fifth of the number translated in Greece. The aggregate total of translated books from the Al-Ma’moon era [in the ninth century] to the present day amounts to 10,000 books - equivalent to what Spain translates in a single year." Needless to add that in authoritative countries like these, an outcome as ridiculous as this one, can only and almost exclusively be attributed to the willingness of the Arab regimes to maintain their people in a state of cultural coma.

"The ruling power plays a key role in directing knowledge and in influencing its development or retardation. Since a ruling power works to foster knowledge patterns compatible with its orientation and goals, it inevitably resists or even suppresses other patterns that contradict its general direction," the report concludes.

Knowledge is of a course a central and strategic field in which Arab regimes have knowingly played a retarding role, but that applies also to almost all areas of human development and progress.


Hicham Ben Abdallah al-Alaoui, cousin of King Mohammed VI of Morocco, is a kind of a happy exception from within the Arab establishment. Founder of the Institute for the Trans-regional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia at Princeton University, he has regularly and boldly exposed the scandalous political realities of the Arab world often in an articulate and informed fashion. That caused him serious trouble with the moroccan royal household forcing him into a de facto exile. Apart from that he has participated in many international peace missions, including the UN's mission in Kosovo.

In his latest article* (fr), "How Do Arab Regimes Modernize Authoritarianism," Published in last month edition of Le Monde Diplomatique, he explains how Arab regimes have constantly reinvented pretexts to cling to power and how they are now adapting to the new geopolitical realities, to justify their oppressive rule.

(*) The article first appeared on the internet in e-Joussour.net and is an excerpt from a speech the prince gave last March in a conference held in Le Conseil des Relations Internationales at Montréal. The original piece published in the April paper issue of Le Monde Diplomatique might appear in the following days on the official website of the French monthly magazine.

Picture Courtesy of "3arabawy."

Cruel

“Fascism is capitalism plus murder.”

Upton Sinclair.

A fire destroyed the lives of 55 Moroccan workers, among which 35 women, in a mattress factory in Hay Hassani, an industrial district of the city of Casablanca.


According to aljazeera.net, "Civil protection officials said it had become clear that safety norms had not been applied in the Rosamor factory in the south-west of Morocco's biggest city."

An emergency officer said managers had locked in staff during work hours to stop theft, trapping them in the fire on Saturday. The blaze quickly turned into an inferno, burning victims alive, while others leapt to safety, but many women workers were too scared to jump and were trapped.

Later on, the authorities arrested the factory's bosses and an enquiry into the causes of the blaze was ordered.

Unfortunately, In a country where a savage and primitive predatory form of capitalism has flourished, endemic corruption, a quasi-absence of state regulations, added to a systematic abuse of workers' rights, tragedies like the one that struck Casablanca might reoccur.

Speaking French to a... Cradle!

The Sad Story of a Culturally Alienated Society

When I first decided to start blogging, it was clear in my mind that I wouldn't in any way write in French. And yet French has accompanied me for most of my life and is practically a second mother tongue. I decided to write in English and Arabic. The first because it is the world's language and the latter because it's supposed to be my own language, part of my identity, of which I'm proud. I wasn't motivated at all by any anti-French feeling or some weird nationalistic zealotry. I was simply trying (symbolically) to reclaim the right to my own language and to emancipate (legitimately I think) from the imposed linguistic prison and cultural prism through which I was subconsciously forced to see and interpret the world.

I never felt the urgency or need to write about this issue until I recently witnessed one of my closest friends speak to his newborn son (few days old) in French. He explained how he (an Arab) and his wife (Arab too), although living in Morocco, a supposedly Arab (and Berber) country, deliberately decided to speak French and inculcate French culture to their beloved newborn child.

This is not an exceptional peculiarity in today's Morocco.The north-African kingdom is one of the rare Arab countries (with Lebanon) who -thanks to geographical or geopolitical considerations- has remained open to foreign cultural influences and benefited largely and undeniably from that interaction. But the country has developed very little during its 52 years of independence and having adopted an archeo-capitalistic economic and political system, only a fraction of the population has really achieved any social success. A system that fosters the advancement of a small breed of elites, already favoured by their blood kinship and/or by nepotism. But the system also allowed some, to contemplate and achieve real success, forming a tiny but remarkably active urban bourgeoisie. However, in order to enter this glittering and restrictive world of fortune and achievement, made in Morocco, you must adopt the language of success: French. That, in turn, acted as an efficient incentive for a massive cultural cringe.

Affluent Moroccans -with the exception of some prosperous conservative Islamists- and those who aspire to join them or at least enable their children to reach prosperity, speak often French and put their children in missions françaises : French government-funded schools, originally created to provide education for French nationals and which now receive mostly Moroccan children whose parents prefer to pay the overly expensive application fees rather than trust the bankrupt public education system.

Hence (maybe) the attitude of my friend toward his newborn child. A behaviour significantly representative of an ambitious class of young parents legitimately avid of securing their offspring's future.

In addition to this quite pragmatic and reasonably understandable attitude, the Moroccan society has gradually drifted into a cultural alienation en masse: e.g. It's commonplace in Morocco to hear self-loathing comments dismissive of Moroccans own culture as inferior to that of western immediate neighbours; many would claim that Morocco was better-off under Franco-Spanish occupation while all evidence show how the country was grossly and savagely raped and exploited and little infrastructure left for the sake of the country's own development; very fierce opposition often develops against any reform of the education system that would include "Arabisation," a term which became synonymous of aversion and often generates odium since the failure of a reform conducted in the 70s for purely electoralistic purposes, with no clear planning by the then-(allegedly)-panarabist party of Istiqlal, and which saw generations of young Moroccan students engage in an educational system ridiculously incompatible with the realities of the job market producing scores of under-qualified and dangerously disillusioned graduates. Although this phenomenal failure was clearly due to political interference and lack of planning, the Arabic language per se, remained the principle cause of the fiasco in the mind of many Moroccans who often praise almost everything French as panacea.

Self-loathing is commonly heard in discussions with people mostly discouraged and deeply disillusioned with their own cultural background and own identity.

That, to me, shows a serious and quasi-pathological state of self-hatred often dubbed by social anthropologists, "colonial mentality."

"Culturally alienated societies often exhibit a weak sense of cultural self-identity and place little worth on themselves," yielding dysfunctional attitudes and a "permanent state of discouragement" according to post-colonial anthropologists like Helen Tiffin. Mental and social well being, the prerequisite condition for healthy, cohesive and productive societies can rarely be achieved in these conditions. Alfred Adler, the pioneer of social and community psychology, clearly identified an intrinsic inferiority complex at the root of the self-devaluating process in culturally cringed societies. He emphasised "the importance of social equality in order to prevent various forms of psychopathology and espoused the development of social interest and democratic family structures as the ideal ethos for raising children." (source: Wikipedia). I think that my friend would be interested in hearing that.

Unbelievably enough, half a century after (formal) independence from France, almost half of the Moroccan population is still illiterate. Most of the few presumably literates speak, read or write only Arabic, many of whom understand barely classical Arabic. The fact of adopting French as the quasi-exclusive language of mainstream news, knowledge, science, economics has in effect acted as a cultural Apartheid for the scores of disenfranchised, uneducated Moroccans, condemning them to a state of permanent ignorance and subordination. The dilemma is to insure that knowledge and information is provided fairly to the largest possible amount of people without stigmatizing any of the foreign languages and cultures or denying their invaluable benefits or losing one's own culture and identity in the process.

The picture is not completely bleak though. The Aljazeera "revolution" having proved to the world and to the most sceptics (amongst which I counted) that the Arabic language was alive and kicking, easily adaptable to different issues ranging from news to science, art...

Also the recent publication by some prominent Moroccan intellectuals and journalists of magazines and newspapers in Darija, the local Arabic dialect, opened an even larger opportunity to reach the greatest number of people.

Picture Courtesy of "Ladies! Yea Ladies!"

Non-Violent Dissent Pays

Fouad Mourtada reportedly freed yesterday after being granted royal amnesty, having spent nearly two mouths in prison for no tangible reason other than committing a crime of lèse-majesté. Even in Morocco, resilient, perseverant and honest non-violent dissent pays.

The news from Morocco (if confirmed) is a real sigh of relief for many bloggers, and HR activists who campaigned hard to make the case of Fouad known and widely published. But this is not a victory for democracy nor for HR (as the Moroccan writer Laila Lalami rightly pointed out on her blog) because the institutions of the monarchy have acted in clear subservience to the central power. And I don't think that one can feel comfortable yet in a country where people are being imprisoned and later released according to the will and whims of one single person. Anyway, Fouad is now a free man. Until Mourtada's arrest, Moroccans have enjoyed reasonably free access to the internet compared to the regional standards. They rightly spotted the danger of imprisoning Mourtada and they succesfully named and shamed the Moroccan government for what it did. Throughout the Arab World, though, many bloggers and other prisoners of opinion still languish in prisons sometimes without due process or any legal recourse.

By the way, Aid Maulid a'Nabawi Saîd (happy Maulid feast).

Beautiful Faces

> HelpFouad.com

> Watch pictures of Fouad supporters here.

Thanks Amine for keeping me updated... as always!

Free Fouad! Free all Political Prisonners!

The Moroccan community in France, mobilized yesterday, in support of Fouad's cause and that of all political prisonners in Morocco.

> related post.

They Need Support!

Check those links and support prisoners of thought in Morocco:

> Prisoners of May the First who demanded constitutional reform in their country got harsh sentences and were fined heavily for daring to challenge the regime.

> Fouad Mourtada, who maybe stupidly usurped the identity of the Prince Rachid when he created a fake profile on FaceBook, but he received disproportionate sentences. I don't believe he would have been punished so harshly had the victim been an ordinary Moroccan.

Zeroes & Heroes

Many actors played different roles in shaping the ups and downs of last year events. Some usual suspects who left already their print in previous years have proven to be resiliently present in 2007. Others have emerged as new figures. Here are the makers and breakers who caught my eye in '07.

The Zeros

The gangster administration in Washington

Responsible for the killing (in a way or another) of well over one million Iraqis (according to the most conservative estimates) and the displacement of more than four million others, the Bush administration has persevered in manipulating the facts and succeeded in stirring up factional and sectarian divisions within Iraq. Divide and rule as the old adage goes. The puppet regime in Baghdad, a rubber stamp of what ever Washington decides has shown complete incompetence and subservience and proved to be completely disconnected from the Iraqi people. Although one can only be pleased by the relative decrease in the number of terrorist attacks (from whatever source they might come) and casualties among civilians, the fact remains that Iraq is still under occupation by a colossal number of foreign troops, backed by some hundred thousands mercenaries; and that its oil resources have now been de facto mortgaged by major American oil companies through the euphemistically called Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs).

The Apartheid regime in Israel

Israel has shown, yet again, to those who had a shred of doubt about its real -barely hidden- intentions, that it is not, had not and will not be prepared to pay the price of JUSTICE, the only and genuine road-map for PEACE. Its lobby and supporting "think" tanks have shown, beyond any reasonable doubt how influential they were in shaping American foreign policy towards the question of Palestine. Scholars have yet again been silenced and the systematic accusation of anti-Semitism has been brandished to all those who dared challenging the received wisdom about Israel branded as the "only democracy in region," when it is the only remaining apartheid state in the World. The Gaza concentration camp has been squeezed into a cruel embargo which is aimed at collectively punish the Palestinians for having democratically voted in the wrong way. A stooge government has been anointed: "the legitimate government of Palestine," effectively playing the role of the I'D'F in oppressing the occupied people in Palestine. Signed agreements (remember Annapolis?) have been dishonoured and more illegal settlements have been built up on equally illegal colonies planted on the land stolen from the Palestinians.

Arab despots and potentates (without exception, from the Atlantic to the Arabian-Persian sea)

At the very root of the complete tragedy experienced by Arabs and Muslims all over the world, the Arab regimes, 22 in total, managed to stay in power in large part because (or thanks to) the Western support. These are the most incompetent, backward, inept, power-obsessed and megalomaniac heads of states on the planet. Of course, the peoples have only the kind of government they deserve." This is true to a large extent, and one should not easily put all the blame on external conspirators, although the conspiracy is not all theoretical. Taha Hussein, the dean of contemporary Arabic literature and a pioneer of enlightenment in the Arab World (according to ArabWorldBooks.com) once said:

"We want to be free people in our countrie[s], free of foreigners such that they cannot oppress us or treat us unjustly, and free with respect to ourselves, such that no one of us can oppress or treat another unjustly."

Religious fanatics of all sides

Since 9/11, religious fanaticism has been thriving. Alqaeda found in the actions of the Bush administration, which has mainly gained the white house -especially in its second term-thanks to the very "generous" support of very influential Christian fundamentalists -most of them openly Zionists-, the more powerful recruitment argument for its campaign of terror and nihilist destruction. Extremes have always campaigned for each other!

The Heroes

President Hugo Chavez

The Venezuelan president has won more democratic and transparent elections, and more popular referenda than any other living leader. He is independent and pro-people, hence the hostility of the Western establishment towards him. More power to you Chavez!


Illan Pappé

The courageous Israeli historian has published at the beginning of this year, the English version of his book ""Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine." A refreshingly honest account of how Israel seeks, as it had always sought to, to systematically and methodically kill, harass, terrorise and push the Palestinians to the edge so that they lose hope and renounce their rights and eventually leave their homeland.


Norman Finkelstein

Another victim of the Israel lobby in America, forced to resign from his position for no reason other than being forensically objective about the realities of the middle east. Fascism is still alive and kicking!

John Pilger

Award-winning independent journalist and a renowned documentary film-maker. "The War on Democracy" is his latest opus. A startling reminder of the ravages that capitalism has already caused in Latin America, considered for decades to be the American (USA) preserve. Based on an arrogant imperial vision of the world and on the so-called Washington Consensus which theorized and underpinned the neo-liberal policies for the last two or three decades, successive American administrations made sure that no genuine democracy springs in the southern half of the continent: putting absolute potentates at the head of States, overthrowing democratically elected governments and sponsoring a class of plutocrats monopolizing their country's wealth at the expense of impoverished populations.

Aboubakr Jamaï

The founder of the most popular Moroccan magazine, Le Journal Hebdo, was forced earlier this year, to leave Morocco in order to avoid paying a record breaking fine of $350,000, that would otherwise bankrupt his magazine. He is one of the most popular and charismatic young journalists that the country has ever produced, and one who marked the recent Moroccan journalistic scene by bringing a revolutionary new style of professional investigative journalism. He openly challenged the monarchy and the military and literally paid the price. In November 2005, Jamaï wrote a ground-breaking open letter to Mohamed VI in which he urged the monarch to grab the opportunity of his political virginity and his capital of popular sympathy to put the country on the tracks of reform. The letter fell on deaf ears.

Happy new year to all.

What a Real Happy New Year Would Mean

One Answer Would Be: Getting Rid of Poverty and Child Labor

This is not meant as a miserabilist attempt to hamper the joy of those who, legitimately, want to forget about the ills and miseries of our society. But it is a reminder of the kind of obstacles still ahead.

Thanks for Amine, my indefatigable and tremendously resourceful correspondent and friend.

Short movie by a young Moroccan director (name not communicated), posted on the Internet last September

Bring Mehdi Back! (Part II)

Mehdi Ben Barka (1920-1965) is the charismatic leader (amongst others) of the anti-colonial movement which led Morocco to formal independence from France in 1956. He founded the National Union of Popular Forces (UNFP) in 1959. He later was accused of plotting against the regime and forced to exile. The Moroccan authorities condemned Ben Barka to death in absentia in 1964. He was kidnapped in Paris -in broad day light- in October 29, 1965. His body was never recovered.

I've read many papers and commentaries on the life and death of Mehdi Ben Barka, but the one piece, I think, that has cleverly put the circumstances of the murder of the Moroccan leader in its appropriate perspective, both local and international, was this article published exactly two years ago in Le Monde Diplomatique by Rene Gallissot, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Paris.

I apologize in advance if my (paraphrasing) translation sounds poor or inappropriate. In any case, you can find the original piece in full here (fr).

Mehdi Ben Barka & the Tricontinental
(Part I)

René Gallissot
October 2005
In Le Monde Diplomatique

1956 was a vertiginous year: turmoil within the communist bloc, a Franco-British "expedition" in Suez. July 26, president Gamal Abdel Nasser decides to nationalize the Suez Canal and everyone predicts the collapse of Egypt; the opposite happens, along with a surge in independence struggles. The Bandung conference had already predicted in April 1955, this upsurge of national emancipation movements which will indeed occur first in Asia and Africa, then in Latin America , the former Portuguese colonies in Africa and eventually in South-Africa.

Who remembers today July 14, 1958, when the Republic was proclaimed in Baghdad, radiant, with no religious veils, renewing the French Revolution's declaration of 1789, secular, federating all minorities, promising pluralism of thought and expression? The French war in Algeria continued unabated, but Algerians were standing firm. For Africa, the epicenter was then the Congo, freed at last from [the cruel] grasp of Belgium domination. [In the beginning of the 60's,] the Tricontinental was a de facto reality.

Mehdi Ben Barka, at the very moment of his assassination in October 1965, was working on making the liberation movements in the "third-world" converge, by preparing the Tricontinetal Conference which was scheduled to take place in Havana in January 1966 [...]

The institutionalisation of the regimes following independence [from western colonial powers,] raised the problematic of distinguishing State strategies for [controlling] power on the one hand from the international liberation movement on the other. In 1961, in opposition to so-called "moderate" states, the Group of Casablanca assembled representatives from states known as progressive: Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Libya and Morocco under the advocacy of Abdallah Ibrahim's left leaning government (which will soon after be revoked) [...]

Due to two condemnations to death in Morocco, Ben Barka was constantly in exile, often travelling between Cairo and Geneva. During his six months stay in Algiers, he engaged in the laborious task of bringing about an internationalist perspective for the conjunction of the national liberation movements [...]

The Algerian capital had become the intellectual home for the international revolutionary contestation [...]

Breaking up underdevelopment was not only a national project, it was also a concerted action against dependency to the Capitalistic system, the dominant poles of which are various but fundamentally linked to the economic and political hegemony of the United States. "Africa is the Latin America of Europe," repeatedly said Ben Barka. Federating the Maghreb and Africa was taking an anti-imperialistic dimension. We are here far from national-developementalism which eventually transformed the left -in the context of the emerging states- into [a lifeless] technocratic elite. The Tricontinental movement was independent from the Soviet Union and Ben Barka wanted to establish an autonomous dynamic [...]

In Algiers, Ben Barka launched a new publication for information, agitation and reflexion for the anti colonialist commission of the OPSAA (The Organization for the Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa and Asia established in Accra-Ghana in 1957), titled "la Revue Africaine." His interest turned then towards Cuba and Latin America. He was particularly impressed by the Cuban [tremendously successful] literacy campaign, dreaming of a similar experience in his own Morocco. He decided to work in establishing a documentation and studies Center on national liberation movements and -convinced as he was by the revolutionary potential amongst third-world youth- he set up the outline for a Tricontinental University [...]

American attempts to overthrow Fidel Castro, led the Cuban leader to get closer to Moscow. Followed the "Cuban Missiles" crisis and the cruel US economic blockade over the island. In 1962 Cuba was expelled from the Organization of the American States and Castro summoned "the people of the world to get moving." That was the precise objective of the Tricontinental. In October 3th, 1965, Ben Barka declared during a media conference, preliminary to the Havana Conference that "both currents of the world revolution will be represented: that stemming from the October revolution (or Bolshevik revolution) and that from the national liberation revolution."

The profound cause of the abduction and murder of Ben Barka can only be elucidated within this revolutionary and Tricontinental context.

To Be Continued...

Bring Mehdi Back!

A French judge, Patrick Ramaël, launched yesterday five international arrest warrants against high-ranking Moroccan personalities, well established in the State Apparatus and the Moroccan army. They are suspected of being involved in the abduction (in October 29, 1965 in Paris) and subsequent murder, of the historic Moroccan opposition figure, Mehdi ben Barka. The suspects are namely: Gen. Hosni Benslimane (head of the gendarmerie nationale), Abdelhak Kadiri (former head of the military intelligence), Miloud Tounsi (allegedly a member of the gang who kidnapped Ben Barka in front of Brasserie Lipp), Boubker Hassouni and Abdlehak Achaachi (both members, at the time, of a Moroccan secret unit).

Judge Ramaël visited Morocco in the recent past and tried to interview the aforementioned suspects but has been repeatedly delayed and obstructed by the Moroccan authorities who used all means and the most ludicrous excuses to discourage Ramaël from doing his job.

Forty two years after the death of Ben Barka, and after many frustrations and aborted attempts, all I personally hope is that some form of justice is -at last- unfolding in front of our eyes. The body of Mehdi Ben Barka was never recovered and his family (as well as the bulk of the Moroccan civil society) has been eagerly awaiting for some due process to take place so as they (and their compatriots) can overcome their grief.

To Be Continued...

Wishful Thinking

As each day goes by, I wonder if I should give it up all together. I'm beginning to have some headaches because of all this mumbo jumbo about democracy, elections and so on and so forth... I had these thoughts for a moment now and I can't help thinking and wondering: What if elections in my country were free and fair? What if the PM of Morocco and the government-elect were from a progressive, clean and people-driven party? What if the King finally conceded power to the elected institutions of the country and satisfies himself by a role of mediation and arbitration? What if a national conference was held and the country's elite was called to draw a new text for the constitution? What if the judiciary was given -at last- free rein to investigate, litigate, prosecute and judge anyone on equal basis? What if the press was given the freedom it ought to have? What if people who brandish religion as a political ideology stopped meddling into the political life? What if the corrupt thugs and kleptocrats of the Makhzen were held accountable for the theft of the country's wealth, for their hideous embezzling activities and their monopoly of the economic sector through clique and cronies? What if an enlightened educational system was proposed to all Moroccans' sons and daughters without prejudice of class or gender? What if the huge amounts of money assigned to royal palaces' maintenance and to satisfying the monarch's caprices were rather allocated to social and public projects? What if the government efforts were concentrated on bringing about a dignified health system guaranteeing that people are not going to be turned down because of their lack of resources or forced to bribe nurses and doctors to get access to basic care? What if the legislature was disconnected from the executive power and awarded autonomy to move away from its current subservient role of a complaisant rubber stamp?

... Ah... the headache again!... wait a minute I'm gonna take a paracetamol tablet... Gulp!... I'm feeling better now... So, where were we?... Yes: What If...

What if big public companies were ruled by highly monitored civil servants thoroughly accountable before people's representatives? What if Morocco lastly cut loose the leash of servility with French companies who are literally buying out the public sector in the name of an opaque process of "privatization"? What if the country stopped its vulgar worship of the US administrations, one after the other, and started engaging in a sovereign path and empathising and cooperating with fellow independent States? What if the monarch started fulfilling his (self-anointed) role of the "President of the Palestine Council"(sic)? What if al-Alaoui (you know... the two-faced marathon speaker of the RTM -Radio Television Marocaine- who often accompanies and comments on King's televisual "activities" with a ridiculous shivering voice, often on edge of tears, pledging his allegiance every second of every minute making viewers either laugh out loud or causing them to vomit out of disgust), what if he was relieved from his sycophantic "mission" alleviating millions of people? I'm sure he could be easily reassigned to a more "discreet" position (I don't want the man to end up jobless after all, despite the pain in the neck he often caused me.) What if a civil rather than a military was elected as head of the Moroccan football federation? What if sport stopped being shamefully used as an anesthetic of the masses ? What if the 2022 World Cup was held in Morocco? What if Raja Club Athletic started winning again?

And Finally, what if I stopped rambling just right here?

Wishful thinking! one might challenge; maybe so, but one thing is for sure: I don't think any Paracetamol dose will be able to calm this bloody headache... I hope a good sleep will do... good night and good luck!

(picture credit: "imaqine")

Chatting With the Prince, Part II

Praising Evolution

The advent of the new Monarch in Morocco has raised a lot of hopes in the future; maybe too much. But the dreams and illusions have been terribly dashed after two electoral shams in 2002 and 2007. Many Moroccans (especially the young) may have lost hope in changing the system in an evolutionary way (from the inside, by participating in the political system and by using the institutions available.) This helpless situation may have led some to contemplate or consider a "revolutionary option"...

That was the question I e-mailed to today's Riz Khan show on Aljazeera which was hosting Prince Hicham (thanks Amine for the tip!):

An enlightened evolution toward democracy is always a safer option than a headstrong revolution stemming from despondency and which often gets out of hand and yields undesirable and unpredictable results. But the danger of not having alternatives and languishing in a continuous state of political, economic, cultural and social sclerosis is to constrain the more desperate and destitute people to extremist solutions. Some may very well consider revolutionary rather than evolutionary options taking the risk of embarking the country on the unknown.

That was in substance the answer of Prince Hicham to which I adhere.

The "Red Prince" as he's often labeled hinted at the antagonistic relationship he still has with his cousin the King, reiterated his views on the Moroccan monarchy and commented on the latest legislative elections. He answered further viewers' questions emphasising the need for a fundamental change in the way the power in wielded in Morocco (and beyond... throughout the Arab world.)

Refreshing!

(look up for the video here)