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…
Report by Majed Azaan from Aden (South Yemen) In Aden teachers taking strike action were threatened by visits from the Education Monitoring body, which weaken the teachers who are taking action and sending signals to prevent non-strikers from joining their colleagues. The teachers were employed at the last period of Saleh’s rule, he was trying…
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…
Originally posted on Egypt Solidarity:
A vicious homophobic campaign is underway in Egypt following the arrest of seven people alleged to have raised the rainbow flag during a concert in Cairo on 22 September. According to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) the crackdown has led to over 50 arrests of people across the…
First published in Issue 7 of Middle East Solidarity (Autumn 2017). A major strike in October 2016 by workers in state-owned heavy industries has to be understood in the context of a much wider social rebellion, writes Gianni Del Panta On 31 October 2016 workers began an open-ended strike at the huge state-owned factory in…
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…
The sacking of Aden governor Aidarous al-Zubaidi by the Saudi-based Yemeni president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi has triggered a mass mobilisation in the port city. Mirfat Sulaiman reports on how struggles for social justice are interwoven with the call for an independent South Yemen. On 21 May, Khormaksar Square in central Aden was packed with tens…
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…
By Mirfat Sulaiman Students from the Faculty of Education at Aden University in Yemen walked out of classes during protests on 15 January. Lecturers and students jointly rejected the sacking of the new principal, Dr Mohammed Al-Fakeerh. The students said the real reason for the government’s decision is that Dr Al-Fakeerh rejected its chaotic sale…
MENA Solidarity Network 