Rabat (EFE) – Coinciding with the 12th 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 of the roundabout. affiliate Basic food prices.
The protests were called by the Moroccan National Front, an organization of rights associations and left-wing parties and unions, and came a day after another series of small demonstrations in various cities against the high cost of living, organized in this case by the CDT union.
In Rabat, about thirty people gathered in front of the Moroccan parliament behind a banner of “immediate release of political prisoners” and chanted slogans calling for the release of journalists such as Suleiman Raissouni and Omar Radi, who were sentenced to several years in prison in actions he denounced. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
“No education, no health care”, “Where is our wealth?” , “We want freedom,” “They want to lead us to beg,” “You taught your children and you crushed the children of the people,” the demonstrators said.
Among them was veteran activist Khadija Riad, a member of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights, who explained to EFE that “most people in Morocco have difficulties eating every day” because food and fuel are “at unaffordable prices.” Since January, basic food prices have doubled or even tripled.
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movement for fair prices
We also protest to commemorate the 20th of February. A movement that hoped for a democratic state in which freedoms would be respected. We want there to be a minimum level of respect for human dignity. Unfortunately we are in a worse situation than in 2011,” he said.
Regarding the fact that the protests do not gather many people, he indicated that this is due to the fact that “the channels for disseminating information are dominant.”
All the organizations that are here (at the protest) are forbidden to speak on Moroccan television. He added that the independent press that publishes our calls and demands is almost destroyed.
In the city of Fez, the live broadcast of the electronic newspaper “Haspress” showed a larger protest than that of the Moroccan capital, with about 150 people chanting similar slogans.
In the coastal city of El Jadida, south of Casablanca, dozens of people chanted, “The people want change.” In the center of Zouk al-Sabt, they demanded improvement in health services and jobs, and raised slogans in support of “political prisoners.”
The rise in prices led to demonstrations on Sunday in various cities of the country organized by the Democratic Labor Union.
Dozens gathered in Rabat, chanting phrases such as “No to destruction! purchasing power of citizens” and denouncing the responsibility of the government that is trying to stop the rise by vetoing some exports and raising tariffs on imports.
Last Thursday, the head of the executive authority, Aziz Ajanush, confirmed that Prices will go down In the coming weeks before Ramadan (when consumption goes up).
Today’s protests commemorate the day in 2011 when tens of thousands of people, mostly young people, took to the streets of various Moroccan cities to demand “freedom, dignity and social justice,” a slogan that was then repeated across the Arab world.
As in other countries, the spark ran spontaneously on social networks, and the organizers of the meeting were anonymous young people who made an online appeal and created what is known as the February 20 Movement.
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