Moroccan youth and feminist activists are appealing for international solidarity with Fadila al-Makhloufi, a member of Al-Mussawah (Equality) feminist group and the Youth Challenge Movement after her arrest and detention on 22 October. Fadila was interrogated by the Royal Gendarmerie and investigated by the General Prosecutor in Tinghir, in the south east of Morocco in…
Campaigning journalist Omar Radi was detained and charged with “insulting the judiciary” on 26 December, his lawyer has said. He will face prosecutors on 2 January in connection with a comment he made on Twitter 9 months ago about the role of the judge in the conviction of protest leaders from the Rif region. A…
Read our new briefing on the role of teachers in the mass movements for change in the Middle East, prepared for the NEU teachers’ union conference just before Easter. Download a printable version of this leaflet Teachers_MENA_2019. Teachers on the frontline of the struggle for change As a new wave of popular protests and uprisings…
By Mehdi Rafiq Fifty-five thousand teachers on temporary contracts took to the streets on Rabat on Saturday 23 March. The National Contract Teachers’ Coordination Committee mobilised the protest order to demand an end to casualisation and the transfer of all teachers to a secure and permanent status as employees of the Ministry of Education. The…
A satirical talk show which opens up space for discussion of topics the Moroccan government would like to sweep under the carpet became an online sensation this summer, garnering an audience of hundreds of thousands on YouTube. But the authoritarian monarchy has hit back, ordering the closure of Racines, the cultural association which hosted the…
by Mehdi Rafiq Over a year after the start of the largest political trial of Mohammed VI’s reign, and after a marathon of over 80 hearings, the criminal court in Casablanca handed out its ruthless verdict on 26 June: the activists of the popular movement in the Rif region of Morocco were sentenced to a…
Representatives of four British trade unions visited the Moroccan embassy in London on 16 October to hand in a petition with over 500 signatures from trade unionists and activists calling for the release of political prisoners detained during the crackdown on the Hirak popular movement in the Rif region. The delegation was timed to highlight…
Leaders of the popular movement, the Hirak, in Morocco’s Rif region and a well-known journalist whose reports on the protest movement have earned him the enmity of the authorities began a hunger strike in jail, family members told the media in September. Nasser Zefzafi and Mohamed Jelloul, two prominent figures from the Rif who have…
Hundreds of trade unionists and activists from the UK have signed a petition demanding the release of the Rif movement prisoners in Morocco. Sally Hunt, general secretary of the UCU union has also backed the solidarity campaign, and sent a letter of solidarity to Morocco’s largest trade union federation, the UMT which has seen four of…
Event: North Africa at the Crossroads – 7pm Tues 11 July, SOAS – book online now Around 100,000 demonstrators took to the streets of the Moroccan capital Rabat on 11 June in solidarity with the mass movement in the Rif region, following a crackdown by the authorities and the arrest of movement leaders. The revival…
MENA Solidarity Network 