[Mb-civic] Guardian Unlimited: Don't mention the monarch

[harry.sifton at sympatico.ca]

Harry spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk

Don't mention the monarch
Morocco's reconciliation process shows that, for its leaders, the past really is another country - they hope, writes Giles Tremlett
Wednesday March 01 2006
The Guardian


When Bara el Ghali took the stand to tell his terrible story of torture and imprisonment it was, without doubt, a unique event: an Arabic-speaking country, in this case Morocco, had set up a truth commission to spell out exactly how bad repression had been in the country over the final decades of the 20th century.

As Morocco headed towards this week's 50th anniversary of its independence, the commission, sponsored by King Mohammed VI, was an opportunity to heal old wounds left by his father, Hassan II. It would, its backers said, let Moroccans forget the past and look to the future.

People like Bara el Ghali were free to tell their stories, and were sometimes broadcast live on television as they did so. They could be watched on television sets in restaurants and cafeterias across the land.

"Not a single member of my family escaped detention," he explained. "They arrested 22 of us, with seven dying during the 25 years in jail."

Among the dead in the el Ghali family, which was suspected of sympathising with the Polisario Front movement, which claims independence for the Western Sahara, was a baby born in jail who lived just 46 days.

Arrested in 1976, Bara was released only in 1991. "That was even worse," he said. "I had lost everything and had to live off charity."

Twenty minutes each was not always enough for the hundreds of people with similar tales to tell, but it was a cathartic experience for them.

It was an attempt, at least, at getting over the "grey years", during which the regime of King Hassan II, who died in 1999, cracked down on his mainly leftwing critics.

The hearings were run by the Equity and Reconciliation Commission, headed by Driss Benzekri, who himself spent 17 years in prison. The idea was to break an ingrained habit of silence backed by fear.

"I wondered whether it was worth it, but I decided that the young people had to be told so that it would not happen again," Maria Ezzaouni, who was locked up and tortured after going on strike as a medical student, told journalists.

With al-Jazeera and other international Arabic-language channels also giving coverage, there were hopes that the ideals behind the inquiry would spread further.

"The impact of these hearings, televised live across Morocco, will be enormous, not only in the country but throughout the region," predicted Hanny Megally, director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at the International Centre for Transitional Justice, as the process got under way.

"It is almost unheard of in this part of the world for victims to be given an official platform to relate their experiences of abuse," he added. "In this respect, Morocco should be praised for breaking new ground."

In the end, the committee recognised that 322 people had been shot dead during demonstrations and another 174 had died after being arbitrarily detained. Others had simply disappeared, and of these, the secret graves of 85 victims were identified.

The commission said that a further 9,280 victims should be paid compensation.

But this was imperfect justice: victims were not allowed to name their torturers, who have escaped punishment and, in some cases, are still employees of the state.

Critics claim the hearings hide a process of self-amnesty by some of those responsible for what happened. They also say the number of dead and disappeared is much larger.

For those who think the book has now been closed on the past, there is always the present to worry about. The commission may have shone light on past abuses, but what about those still perpetrated by a regime run in part directly from the royal palace in Rabat?

"Human rights abuses continue in Morocco. The judiciary is still strictly controlled, the security forces still employ torture, and people still go to jail for writing and saying things deemed insulting to the monarchy," the New York Times commented in a recent editorial.

When 45 people were killed in a 2003 bomb attack in Casablanca, some 1,500 people were arrested and charged with involvement or other "terrorist" activities.

"At least 16 were sentenced to death and hundreds more to prison terms," reports Amnesty International. "Dozens of those sentenced said they had been tortured or ill treated, in some cases in secret detention, but investigations were generally not carried out into the allegations."

As part of his attempts to modernise Morocco, Mohammed VI commissioned a report that concluded last month that the country had suffered "poor political management" over much of the past 50 years.

The same report deemed some 47% of the population "poor or vulnerable", and the authors called for improvements all round. 

In a country where the prime minister and the ministers of the interior, foreign affairs and justice are directly named by the monarch, and where the king indicates every year which laws parliament is to pass, much of the responsibility for making those improvements happens to lie on a single pair of royal shoulders.

Morocco, however, is a country where monarchs are deemed to be above criticism - at least, until they are dead.

The Equity and Reconciliation Commission allowed Moroccans to pass judgement, however veiled, on Hassan II; it will be a long time, however, before they are free to say whatever they want about his son.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited