Category: all things moroccan

The New York Times had a front-page article by Neil MacFarquhar about the human rights movement and the challenges it faces in today’s Morocco. MacFarquhar spoke to Ahmed Marzouki, the man who spent 18 years in solitary confinement in King Hassan’s notorious jail at Tazmamart; Assia el-Ouadie, who runs a foundation to rehabilitate prisoners and give them job training; Mustafa Rameed, a politician from the Islamist party Justice and Development; and Zakia Mrini, a women’s rights advocate based in Marrakech. Here is an excerpt:

[M]orocco has moved further along the reform road than any of its Arab neighbors. Its press is vibrant and outspoken. A family law no longer treats women as chattel. Civic organizations can be formed with relative ease, and scores of them work on everything from improving prison conditions to lowering the country’s abysmal illiteracy rate.

Yet the entire system of law rests not on a framework of checks and balances, but on the whim of the king. Morocco’s Constitution declares the king both sacred and the “prince of the faithful.”

Other Arab constitutions do not declare the ruler holy, but an official reverence cocoons virtually every president or monarch in the region. Anyone who challenges the ruler does so at his own peril.

It is a fact that raises a central question here and across the Middle East: What is needed to turn states of despotic whim into genuine nations of law?

The picture that emerges from the article is one of a country that has made great strides in the last five years to ensure political freedom and women’s rights, but where there is no framework of checks and balances. Rather, MacFarquhar observes, advancements still depend “on the whim of the king.”

Be sure to look at the photos that accompany the article. This is a highly recommended read. (If you hit a subscription wall, try this other link, or use bugmenot.com for a login and password.)

By the way, Ahmed Marzouki’s memoir of his detention at Tazmamart, Cellule 10, was a huge bestseller in Morocco. You can read the Moorishgirl review here.

Moroccan filmmaker Laila Marrakchi was at the Toronto International Film Festival to present her latest feature film, Marock, starring Morjana Alaoui and Mathieu Boujenah. The movie is the story of two Moroccans, a Muslim woman and a Jewish man, who fall in love but are told by their communities that the relationship cannot continue.

Marock is Marrakchi’s fourth film, her second feature. Here she is talking about it.

The Christian Science Monitor has a thoughtful, well-researched piece on the subject of immigration in Morocco. With as many as 10% of native-born Moroccans now living abroad, the country has come to rely on its diaspora for a significant portion of its hard currency income. What’s even more interesting is the kind of Moroccans who are leaving the country–not whom you might expect:

“Most of the people in Tarfaya dream of being somewhere else. That’s why they all have satellite dishes. They’re not watching Moroccan TV, they’re watching French and Spanish, aspiring to be somewhere else,” says [film director Daoud Oulad Syad] Mr. Syad.

The fact that so many Moroccans dream of leaving significantly threatens Morocco’s economic development, social well-being, and political stability. “Every year Morocco loses two to three percent of its GNP to brain drain,” says Lahlou. “Every year we lose between 3,000 and 5,000 professors, doctors, and engineers annually.”

This loss means fewer well-educated, ambitious citizens who could help lead their country. But there is an irony here, for if through emigration Morocco loses capital in some forms, it gains it through the money its emigrants send back to their families. Indeed, the International Monetary Fund reports that a full 9 percent of Morocco’s GNP comes from remittances – a percentage far greater than the 1.66 percent sent home by Mexicans working in the US.

In related news, hundreds of sub-Saharan immigrants, who had been biding their time in northern Morocco waiting for a good time to cross into Europe, simply decided to storm the Spanish presidio of Ceuta using ladders to scale the fences. A many as 500 scaled the walls at once.

This week’s mass assaults on the lower part of the fence may have been brought on by work to double its height to 20 feet along the 6-mile border, which is now nearing completion.

Spain has owned the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the northern coast of Morocco since the late 15th Century.

Morocco, which claims them, is struggling to deal with an influx of sub-Saharan Africans into its territory as well as curb its own citizens’ attempts to use sea routes to cross to Spain illegally.

It’s turning into a big, bloody mess, and Morocco appeals to not have either the resources or the power to deal with this. The situation has only worsened in the last two years. Spain is scrambling to reform its laws, the article says:

Sub-Saharan immigrants present Spain with a worse problem than Moroccans or Algerians, whom it simply sends back, because it often lacks repatriation agreements with their countries of origin.

Spain has such a deal with Nigeria, is negotiating with Ghana but is only in preliminary talks with Cameroon and Mali, from where many of the migrants come, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Spain therefore often has no choice but to free these migrants, after handing them an expulsion order which the authorities cannot carry out.

So while the Moroccan government may be concerned about sub-Saharan immigrants in its territory, it can’t (or won’t) do much about Moroccans who decide to emigrate.

The International Herald Tribunes has an interview with Karim Tazi about Morocco’s textile industry, which was nearly destroyed by the removal of textile quotas on China. The industry, of which Tazi is an active member, has had to learn to cope with this giant competitor.

More news about illegal crossings from Morocco to Spain. This time, the police have detained 1,152 illegal immigrants, the majority of whom hail from sub-Saharan countries. Reuters quotes estimates of half a million people trying to immigrate to Europe from Africa each year.

I forgot to mention this last week. The Moroccan government has donated $500,000 to the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. To help put this in perspective, consider that 20% of Moroccans get by on less than a dollar per day. More than 90 countries have offered help, though I can’t for the life of me find a complete list anywhere.