By incepting rights violations hearings, King opened 'way to democracy building', former detainee
Morocco, Politics, 3/17/2005

"HM King Mohammed VI opened the way to the building of democracy and the people has to support the sovereign in consolidating the process," said former detainee, Mohamed Mahri, at a public hearing on past human rights violations that occurred in Morocco between 1956 and 1999.

In a testimony before the sixth session of a series of such hearings, held in Marrakech on Wednesday by the justice and reconciliation commission set up in January 2004 to shed light on the breaches, Mahri spoke of the ordeal he lived after he was arrested in Casablanca in 1964 saying that since then he grew convinced that "the building of a democratic Morocco depends on the establishment of the rule of law and on the symbiosis between the people and the throne."

The commission - known by the French acronym IER (instance equitŽ et reconciliation) - started in December of 2004 a series of public hearings, first in Rabat, then in 2005 in Figuig, Errachidia, South-East of the country, and in Khenifra, Central Morocco. The commission was created to settle out of court human rights violation cases.

Tens of people, either former detainees arrested in incidents that took place in these regions, or their relatives related, during the various sessions, their experience and the suffering they experienced following the incidents.

Former victims, their relatives, national and international observers note the holding of these hearings reinforce the democratic practice in Morocco and help reconcile the nation with its past.

As to Abdeljalil Toulimate, who was arrested twice in 1977 when a student in Rabat and as a teacher in 1984 in Abijaad, central Morocco, he said the democratic achievements in the country since early 1990s cannot be denied for they made the whole set of political actors shoulder their responsibilities in preserving the democratic process. He called for the "rehabilitation and moralisation of political action and for the enhancement of ongoing reforms in education" and other areas, stressing the need to open the dossiers on "perversion in administrative, economic, electoral and judiciary fields," for it may be a hindrance to development and democracy. Mohamed Lemrabtine, arrested several times between 1964 (in Casablanca where he was kept in the notorious "Corbis" detention center, close to the Anfa airoport), and 1979, suggested to open the center to the public to help make known the violations committed in the center in the sixties and seventies.

The center is "a black blot in the History of Morocco," said Lemrabtine recalling how several people died in the center that hosted several "symbols" of the national movement.

Former prisoner Hamid Zkirem told of his plight when incarcerated for possessing arms, dating back to the resistance era against colonial occupiers. He was arrested in 1967 in the police station of Jamaa El Fna, a square in Marrakech known as a tourist attraction.

Zkirem said all the seven members of the "Moulay Chafai" movement, he belonged to, were killed in Amezmiz, South of Marrakech, saying, on the other hand, "the independence of Morocco was aborted or was born unfinished, as in 1959 several leaders and members of the resistance against colonial powers were arrested.

At the Marrakech hearing, Mrs El Batoule Trawate said her testimony would not show the scope of the suffering she and her family experienced after the arrest of her son Mustapha Belhouari, because of his political activities, relating the provocations that targeted all the members of the family as of 1981.

She also told of the financial and psychological harm and the pressure the members of the family suffered even ending up in the arrest of another of her sons and her husband. The arrest of the son and the father forced Mustapha to surrender before he was sentenced to ten years.

Five other people presented testimonies at the Marrakech hearing held part of the IER series that also schedule sessions in the Northern town of Al Hoceima and the Southern city of Laayoune. The commission also organises meetings to discuss themes related to the background of the violations and to the reforms at the political and institutional levels to remedy to the situation.

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