READ IT AND WEEP. MOROCCO IS THE COUNTRY HOSTING THE 2nd WORLD FORUM ON HUMAN RELATIONS THIS MONTH!!! The 2011 constitution introduced protection for the first time for the right to create an association yet, in practice, officials continue to arbitrarily prevent or impede many associations from obtaining legal registration, undermining their freedom to operate. Groups affected include some that defend the rights of Sahrawis, Amazighs, sub-Saharan migrants, and the unemployed as well as cultural, and educational associations whose leaders includes members of al-Adl wal-Ihsan, a well-entrenched, nationwide movement that advocates for an Islamic state and questions the kings spiritual authority. In Western Sahara, authorities withheld legal recognition for all local human rights organizations whose leaders support independence for that territory, even associations that won administrative court rulings that they had wrongfully been denied recognition. Laws that criminalize acts deemed harmful to the king, the monarchy, Islam, or Morocco’s claim over the disputed Western Sahara limited the rights to peaceful expression, assembly, and association. In February, a military court sentenced 25 civilian Sahrawis to prison terms, including nine to life imprisonment. The trial was just one of many unfair trials in recent years that have resulted in politically motivated convictions. In February 2013, the Rabat Military Court sentenced 25 Sahrawi men to prison terms, imposing nine life sentences, after convicting them on charges arising from violence that occurred on November 8, 2010, when security forces dismantled the Gdeim Izik protest encampment in Western Sahara. The court failed to probe the allegations made by defendants, most of whom had spent 26 months in pretrial detention, that police officers had tortured or coerced them into signing false statements. Yet, the court relied on these contested statements as the main, if not sole, evidence to convict them. Hundreds of suspected Islamist extremists arrested in the aftermath of the Casablanca bombings of May 2003 remain in prison. Many were convicted in unfair trials after being held in secret detention and subjected to ill-treatment and, in some cases, torture. Police have arrested hundreds more suspected militants since further terrorist attacks in 2007 and 2011. Courts failed to uphold the right of defendants to receive fair trials in political and security-related cases. In some cases, they failed to order medical examinations that might substantiate defendants’ allegations of torture, refused to summon exculpatory witnesses, and convicted defendants based on apparently coerced confessions. At the annual UN Security Council debate in April on renewing the mandate of the peacekeeping force for Western Sahara (MINURSO), the US initially proposed enlarging the mandate to include human rights monitoring but backed down in the face of Morocco’s vehement opposition. WE ALL KNOW, NOW, THE SCANDAL AT THE UN OFFICE OF THE FORMER HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND HER STAFF WHO, ALONG WITH MEMBERS OF THE U.S. PRESS AND CONGRESS, WERE PAID NEAT SUMS IN ORDER TO SUPPORT THE OFFICIAL MOROCCAN POSITION ON WESTERN SAHARA AND NOT ENLARGING MINURSO’S MANDATE. hrw.org/world-report/2014/country-chapters/moroccowestern-sahara
Posted on: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 01:02:17 +0000