Coinciding with the twelfth anniversary of the February 20 Movement, which in 2011 represented Morocco’s version of the “Arab Spring”, hundreds of people took to the streets of Morocco on Monday to demand freedom and protest against the rise skyrocketing staple food prices. food.
The protests were called by the Moroccan National Front, an organization that includes human rights associations, left-wing parties and trade unions, and came a day after another round of small protests in different cities against the high cost of living, organized in this case by the CDT union.
In Rabat, about 30 people gathered in front of the Moroccan Parliament behind the banner “Immediate release of political prisoners” and chanted slogans calling for the release of journalists such as Souleiman Raisuni and Omar Radi, sentenced to several years in prison in prosecutions denounced by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
“There is no education or health”, “Where is our wealth?”, “We want freedom”, “They want to lead us to begging”, “You have educated your children and crushed the children of the people” , said the protesters.
Among them was veteran activist Khadija Ryadi, a member of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH), who told EFE that in Morocco “most people have difficulty eating every day” because that food and fuel are “at unaffordable prices”. Since January, staple food prices have doubled or even tripled.
“We are also demonstrating to commemorate the anniversary of February 20. A movement that aspired to a democratic country, where freedoms were respected. We want there to be a minimum of respect for human dignity. Unfortunately, we are in a worse situation than in 2011. “, laments.
Regarding the fact that the demonstrations do not bring together many people, he indicated that it is because “the channels for disseminating information are dominated”.
“All the organizations which are here (in the demonstration) are prohibited from expressing themselves on Moroccan television. The independent press which broadcasts our calls and our demands is practically eliminated”, he added.
In the city of Fez, the live broadcast of the electronic newspaper Hespress showed a protest larger than that in the Moroccan capital, with around 150 people chanting similar slogans.
In the coastal town of El Jadida, south of Casablanca, dozens more people chanted “The people want change” and in downtown Zouk el Sebt they demanded better health services and jobs and launched slogans in favor of “political prisoners”.
The rise in prices led to demonstrations yesterday Sunday in various cities of the country, organized by the Democratic Confederation of Labor (CDT).
Dozens of people gathered in Rabat chanting phrases such as “No to the destruction of the purchasing power of citizens” and denouncing the responsibility of the government, which is trying to stop the rise by banning certain exports and increasing tariffs on import.
The President of the Executive, Aziz Ajanuch, assured last Thursday that prices will drop in the coming weeks before the fasting month of Ramadan (where consumption is soaring).
Today’s demonstrations commemorate the day in 2011 when tens of thousands of people, mostly young people, took to the streets of different Moroccan cities to demand “freedom, dignity and social justice”, a slogan which was then repeated throughout the Arab world.
As in other countries, the spark was ignited spontaneously on social networks, and the summoners were anonymous young people who launched an appeal online and created what is called the February 20 Movement.