Rif activists raise their voices in Moroccan prisons

Ahmed Zafzafi, a 77-year-old retired from Rif, had a five-and-a-half-meter shroud of white cloth ready at his home in Al Hoceima to wrap the body of his 40-year-old son Nasser Zafzafi.

And another to shroud Nabil Ahamjik, his son's hunger strike partner.

Both are in prison in Fez.

Ahmed counted the days that they both have not eaten: they turned 21 on Thursday, when this newspaper contacted the prisoner's father.

And, 25 days this Monday, when, in the middle of the afternoon, the father acknowledged feeling very bad: “Monday is when we talk to Nasser.

But today I have not been able to contact my son.

I do not know if they have taken him to a hospital outside the prison or if he has died ”.

Hours later, Ahmed Zafzafi learned that his son and his colleagues had called off the strike.

“They asked to be regrouped in the Seluán prison in Nador, which is only an hour and a half from Al Hoceima.

And apparently they have promised that they will, ”Ahmed Zafzafi later noted.

The seven Riffian prisoners who have ended the hunger strike are sentenced to between 15 and 20 years.

The two from Fez, Zafzafi and Ahamjik, were joined by three in Guercif and two in Nador.

The Rif protests, which began in late 2016, were crushed in 2017. Hundreds of activists were jailed and as many young Rif people chose to emigrate to Europe.

But the wound remained open.

King Mohamed VI has been granting four waves of pardons to Rif prisoners since July 2017, which amounted to more than half a thousand in Moroccan prisons.

The last of them was granted on July 29, on the occasion of the Feast of the Throne, which commemorates his arrival at the Head of State in 1999. That day, 22 activists were released.

But there were still another 23 jailed.

These are the ones who suffered the harshest sentences;

among them is Nasser Zafzafi and six prisoners with sentences of up to 20 years in prison.

“My son,” Ahmed Zafzafi told this newspaper on Thursday, “would rather die than get out of jail as a coward.

Nasser and the rest of the six companions ask to be regrouped in the Nador prison.

And they also ask that they be released, because they have not committed any crime.

But in order to be pardoned by the Moroccan authorities, they have to apologize first and assume they are guilty.

Guilty of what?

From the torture my son has suffered?

Of having been isolated for 15 months in a jail cell in Casablanca?

Mohamed Majjaoui, 49, was one of 22 Rif activists pardoned by King Mohamed VI on July 29.

Majjaoui had been sentenced to five years, of which he spent three years, two months and two days in prison.

He was in a Tangier jail along with 14 other Hirak prisoners and all but one were pardoned: Mohamed Yelul.

“In Tangier our colleague Mohamed Yelul has remained alone.

When I talk to his mother ... what a shame.

For three years and three months, she came and went with the rest of the women who visited us.

Now she will have to go to Tangier alone.

She told me: 'I don't have the legs to go to Tangier alone again,' says Majjaoui.

The Rif protests arose in November 2016, after the death of the street vendor Mouhcine Fikri, who was crushed to death in a garbage truck when he tried to recover the merchandise that the police just confiscated from him.

That death opened old wounds in Alhucemas, the municipality of 60,000 inhabitants that became the heart of the Rif protests.

Hundreds of young people began to demand better living conditions.

During the protests, a leader was born who had neither university studies nor political experience, but when he took the microphone he drew the loudest applause.

In May 2017 Zafzafi was arrested.

And behind him hundreds more ended up in jail.

Several prisoners, like Zafzafi, were sentenced to 20 years for attacking "the internal security of the State."

Since then he has started at least five hunger strikes.

Support in Al Hoceima

Mohamed Majjaoui says he knows each of the 23 who are still in prison.

“They all deserve freedom.

At the moment they must be brought closer to Al Hoceima.

We know that there is room in the Nador prison, because we have two boys from our group there.

They were kids when they were arrested.

One was 18 and the other 19. And they have been sentenced to 10 and 15 years.

Among the seven who were sentenced to 20 years, most are 19-year-olds.

What serious thing have they done to deserve a 20-year sentence?

One who is in Al Hoceima is called Hassan Barba and he is a kid, barely weighing 55 kilos ”.

After three years, two months and two days in jail, Mohamed Majjaoui says that he finds Al Hoceima almost the same as before.

“Some infrastructure improvements have been made.

But what this city needs is work and that is the same as always, nothing has been done.

And many of them are gone.

Whoever could crossed into Spain.

And others have gone to cities like Tetouan or Tangier ”.

Majjaoui assures that, despite the pandemic, he has noticed the support of the people in Al Hoceima.

“Everyone is with us, with the Hirak prisoners.

Everyone.

I could knock on all doors one at a time.

From children, the people of five or six years, who come to hug you.

Everyone has believed in a better future that the Hirak could bring them.

They have believed in us.

Reconciliation between the State and this area has to come after the release of our political prisoners.

That we feel that we are already talking on the right track ”.

Khadija Ryadi, founding activist of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH), believes that the authorities practice a “policy of revenge”.

“The Rif's political prisoners have shown a high level of resilience.

The power wants to degrade them and break their resistance.

We, as AMDH, demand the immediate unconditional release of the Hirak del Rif detainees and of all opinion detainees in Morocco ”, he concludes.