#mohsin fikri

Marokko werd 78e gerangschikt door ‘Fund for Peace’ op de lijst van fragiele staten en kwam daarmee in de categorie ‘High Warning’. De Fragiele Staten Index (FSI) is een jaarverslag gepubliceerd door de Fund for Peace en het Amerikaanse tijdschrift Foreign Policy sinds 2005. De lijst is bedoeld om de kwetsbaarheid van staten voor conflicten of ineenstorting te beoordelen.

De index is onderverdeeld…

Vandaag is het twee jaar geleden Mohsin Fikri vermorzeld werd door een vuilniswagen in Al Hoceima.

Ik heb geprobeerd mij afzijdig te houden van de randconflicten die opdoken na onze arrestatie. Maar wanneer deze conflicten en meningsverschillen de oorzaak kunnen zijn van het uiteenvallen van de rangen en zelfs schade kan toebrengen aan de Volksbeweging waarbij activisten worden meegesleurd, dezelfde activisten waarin we hoop hadden en nog steeds hebben, om hun steun aan de zijde van hun…

‘The events reflect different important things simultaneously. There is the recurring manifestation of anger over careless police repression, as people are tired of the unhindered behavior of the security forces, often showing its monopoly over violence and authoritarian policies in a spur-of-the-moment such as that fatal day for Mohsin. But it is also a continuation of the explosion of anger and protest in 2011 across the Arab world  - including the Maghreb with its many non-Arab communities and political minorities, such as the imazighen in the northern and southern parts.

As was important to note in 2011, these are not just protests against repression and violence typical of a police state. Dictatorships cannot be understood outside of their larger political-economic context. We find with Morocco a very complex reality caused by the sort of unlimited-privatization and hyper-capitalism that transfers its for-profit logic onto a much more harshly controlled trade of (mostly local) fishery. This regional and national problem is felt very clearly in Morocco’s coastal cities and towns. For instance, we see this in Al Hoceima, where many people are dependent on fish and have been selling fish independently for a long time. Fish and fishery, the coast and the sea are part of the social fabric. All the new rules and regulations, to the point of violent prevention of personal retail, are experienced by residents and fishers as aberrations to normal life. These incidents are testimonies of how economic liberalisation impose undesirable socio-cultural changes. But the contradiction is that they also encourage resistance.

Analysis of these protests needs to incorporate how millions of ordinary people are confronted with critical socio-economic shifts caused by Morocco’s extreme neoliberal policies. This dynamic is in addition to crucial local and historic issues such as the demand for local sovereignty (e.g. to allow local fish and crops to benefit the community instead of a few well-connected (me’rifa) businessmen) and democracy with particular demands for accountability of police repression.

However much these swift and raw public spasms are confirming that social tensions have reached a tipping-point, these are not new. Since independence in 1956, Morocco has provided both a geopolitical and economic sphere of influence, including in particular the northern regions because of their geographic locations connecting Africa, Europe and the Middle East — this was after all, the main motive for the international status of Tangier for a very long time, the poster-boy that provided Africa its largest and oldest tax-free manufacturing zones. And this historic exploitation and suffering is why it matters that the protests erupted in the northern Al Hoceima region, also known as the Rif.

[…] While many didn’t really know about these histories, not even of the epic anti colonial resistance of the 1920s and the massacre at the hand of their own government during the 1950s insurrection, it all haunts the Rif. They then merge with more recent experiences of 2011. We could see the current uprisings as an opportunity for those old and recent memories to converge. Indeed, during the 20 February protests in Al Hoceima five demonstrators were killed and their corpses moved to another location where they were burned to hide evidence. When people reject the promises to investigate the death of Mohsin Fikri, they recall these 5 young men.

Those cases were never resolved despite promises to conduct honest investigations. So there is a certain unfinished business - both a feeling of unfinished business in Al Hoceima in terms of its history and repression by the makhzan, and with the rest of the country with regards to the movements that arose in 2011-12 and were successfully quelled through government cooptation and the promises of new constitution and elections.’