Ten years after Hirak protests in Morocco: the streets are silent, the discontent remains
The call for hospitals, a university, but above all dignity, rang loudly through the streets of Al Hoceima ten years ago.
For months, thousands of people took to the streets to put an end to the neglect of their region, in the Rif area in northern Morocco. The protest movement, known as the Hirak, grew into one of the largest popular movements in the country in years.
In the spring of 2017, the protests were ended with a heavy hand. The main demonstrators, including Hirak leader Nasser Zefzafi, disappeared into prison.
A decade later, it appears that the demands of the Hirak movement are still very much alive. Even when the Gen Z movement took to the streets last year, there was a call for more good hospitals and schools. But the government's approach to these protests also proved not to have changed: repression followed.
The death of Mohsin Fikri
The central square in the city of Al Hoceima, named after the current king Mohammed VI, is the place where the Hirak movement began. Where the square now lies deserted because the tourist season is over, it was packed at the end of October 2016 with angry Riffians.
The death of fish seller Mohsin Fikri was the immediate cause. He died in the press of a garbage truck when he tried to prevent the authorities from destroying his confiscated batch of 500 kilos of swordfish. His death led to a wave of anger and outrage.
The now 24-year-old Lina still clearly remembers that the day after Fikri's death she joined the protest on Mohammed VI square with her classmates. "The day after Mohsin Fikri's death, we just went to school. Our teacher then said: 'What are you doing here? Go outside and demand justice.'"
According to Zohra Koubia of the human rights organization AMDH, Fikri is still seen as a martyr in the Rif area. As long as the authorities do not account for his death, the pain in the Rif continues, Koubia says.
Release of prisoners
She also calls for the release of six prominent Hirak leaders who are still in prison. "Even if they are released tomorrow, their lives are completely destroyed," says the activist. The best known of these prisoners is Nasser Zefzafi. He is serving a twenty-year prison sentence.
Activist Mohamed Jelloul is one of the other Hirak leaders in custody. For his 75-year-old mother Rhimou Saidi, the protests are still an open wound. Jelloul had just been released after a five-year prison sentence for activist practices. Barely six months later, he was sentenced again for his role in the Hirak movement, now to ten years.
"My son Mohamed is a real man," says his mother. "He was not a good-for-nothing. He wanted his country to be free. That we would have better facilities here. That we would be like Europe."
Hogra
Because the Hirak prisoners have been regularly transferred to prisons spread across the country in recent years, Jelloul's mother, together with the parents of the other prisoners, has made many exhausting trips from Al Hoceima to visit her son.
Given all the hardships, Saidi sums up the situation as 'hogra'. This is the word used for repression and humiliation from the state. "I am especially tormented by hogra, just like the Rif as a whole. But I always say: God is enough for me and He is the best protector."
Meager progress and faster repression
Zohra Koubia of the human rights organization AMDH is pessimistic about the progress made in Al Hoceima since the Hirak protests. "Young people are leaving here. We did get a hospital. But only the walls and the machines."
According to Koubia, there is a worrying trend in the government's response to the waves of protests in Morocco over the past fifteen years. "After the protests in 2011 during the Arab Spring, there was still optimism. The demands of the protest movement were quickly granted. The Hirak protests lasted seven months, then repression followed. And with the Gen Z movement, intervention was even faster. They were not even given a chance to catch their breath."