The State's Violence in Morocco

Unjustified use of violence is not something new in Morocco. It has been a feature of the tyranny of the 'Makhzane' since Independence. Hassane II was the 'Lord' of fear, a king that mastered the art of torture, and political suppression of students, activists and progressive writer and journalists. His sunset was a relief and a hope for a better day with the sunrise of his successor Mohamed VI. The hope has not came to an end yet. It has not diminished, but got even bigger. However, the question is how far can we go and wait for the better days we all fantasize about to come with the ongoing rule of the 'Makhzane and the atmosphere of fear that they are still sawing in Morocco?
Going against the state, the national integrity and the spread of Fitna in Morocco is terribly a No No issue, and severely punishable to an extend no one could ever expect a judge to give a minimal. Such acts also have gained much support by a large majority of the Moroccans, especially when it comes to rebels against the Western Sahara. The use of violence was so apparent against protesters in Western Sahara . the Moroccan security forces repeatedly beat and abused people they detained following disturbances on November 8, 2010, in the Western Sahara capital city of El-Ayoun, according to Human Rights Watch. Protests like those bring the wrath of the Makhzane and blood on the way.
Far from the issue of the integrity and the threats of rebels, the state and the Mekhzane are also crushing students teachers trainees. The use of violence was incredible through the series of several protests that took place in major cities in Morocco last year. This year the same scenario is being repeated. Several teachers trainees are protesting against the government's strategy against this group which will leave them with bleak future. Thought the international condemnation about the use of violence against the teachers trainees, the Moroccan authorities have not changed the way they treat peaceful protectors. There have been even news reports in social media that some of the protectors were killed in series of fierce clashes between protectors and the police.
The use of violence by the Moroccan authorities is still an issue that is hard to expose on social media, though we get glimpse about it sometimes in those brave video clips on Youtube and Facebook. People at the margin of the society like the LGBTQ community are made silent by both, the government and the society. There were several cases when many gay men were abused by the police, beaten and tortured when they fell in the wrong hands. Such violation of human rights is gaining more support unfortunately by the large majority of the Moroccan society. Being exposed to the violence of the Makhzane within the LGBTQ community is definitely the worse in those series of unlawfulness of the human suppression in Morocco. Therefore, there should a collective understanding that as a society, we are going to be always exposed to the violence of the Makhzane by being kept divided.

Dear the Moroccan government; you can imprison us, you can ignore our torture, but nothing will stop us fighting for our right to be who we are.
We are made silent, we are made to suffer, we are made invisible, we are hurtfully made criminals just because of our sexual orientation. A situation like this will not last forever. Dear the Moroccan government; we are not anti-Islam, we are not anti-Moroccan culture, we are just stating our opinion not to be judge for being gay.

 LGBT Commun-ity is in Danger in Morocco  

UN, EU, Human right's Watch, please HELP!

Homosexual couple in Morocco brutally beaten... then imprisoned.

Attacks against homosexuals are on the rise lately in Morocco. The video shows a very brutal torture of gay couple in Beni Mellal who had been dragged naked out of their home by the attackers. One of the four attackers allegedly filmed the horrific scene and posted in on the internet which caused a widespread condemnation on social media throughout Morocco.

The attack should have made the government officials and local human rights NGOs react to punish the culprits and reform the law criminalizing homosexuality in Morocco according to article 489, but instead the victims were jailed.

LGBT activists are still silenced and threaten if they speak out against the horror of homophobia in Morocco. The only way you can express your opposition to the government is by being away free from Morocco. Abdellah Taïa is a Moroccan writer living in exile in France conveyed his outrage on Facebook where he stated that.

"It's becoming more and more dangerous to be homosexual in Morocco. The state considers them as little more than criminals and offers them no protection. There are more and more cases of gays being attacked by ignorant, hate-filled mobs. Who will save them? Who will protect them?" 

Following the several attacks on gay people in Morocco, Human Rights Watch has renewed its called for the abolition of article 489, which prevents victims of homophobic violence from going to the police to press charges without being jailed and harassed by the police.

Watch an interview with the young gay man who was savagely beaten almost to death by a mob in Ramadan (July, 2015).
This man lives in Fez, a city where I come from. The area where he was attacked is just 1/5 mile from where I live. He was dragged out of the taxi, by an angry mob, had his cloths torn off and beaten savagely. I was in the city when this event happened. As gay man I felt so terrified that one day that could be ME! Please support gay rights in Morocco and don't let such kind of ugliness happen to innocent people again.
However, I feel glad that he was not killed. There were shouts and calls for killing him when he was attacked. Bearded men, were shouting "Kill the Jewish" "Kill him". He is not Jewish. He was not wearing any women's cloths or had that  long braided hair as it is shown in the video, but they made him look guilty and well-deserved beating up and killing for dressing that way as it is shown in the video.

Watch the video on this link: Attacked by mob for being gay in Fez

Do send us you thoughts and comments on our Facebook page too:Decriminalize Homosexuality in Morocco

Voice of Desperate Moroccan Gay:
Dear all people who care about human rights and LGBT right. I am a gay man from Morocco. I am 24 years old. I came to Europe to do a Masters Degree in women's and Gender Studies. when I wanted to go back to Morocco in the beginning of March, I could not go because my family learned about my homosexuality and the LGBT activities I have been doing in Europe. I have now no protection, neither from my family nor from the law. I am not afraid of the consequence of going back as long as homosexuality is not punished by law in Morocco, even though there is a great danger that my extended family will get rid of me to protect their honour. I need protection from the Moroccan government, but I will never get that as long as homosexuality is punished with 6 to 3 years imprisonment. Being a gay in Moroccan jail will be hell on earth. Please so help me circulate and sign this petition to decriminalize homosexuality in Morocco for me to go back to my country.https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/The_Moroccan_Ministry_of_Justice_and_Liberties_Decriminalize_Homosexuality_in_Morocco/?exEmKgb

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/The_Moroccan_Ministry_of_Justice_and_Liberties_Decriminalize_Homosexuality_in_Morocco/?exEmKgb

Allah Does Not Hate Gay people

My discomfort with the hate speech against homosexuals in world in general, and the barbarism facing us in the Muslim world has led me to reflect on how deadly human beings become once we leave ourselves to be consumed by dangerous ideologies. Allah is not bad, and has never been bad, and will never be bad, so are compassionate and tolerant human beings. However, it is important to note that the problem is not bad people, but bad ideologies.

 Killing gay people or anybody else has never been something Allah would smile upon. Nevertheless, the way human beings wind up in their interpretation of religious texts is remarkably of cost to billions of people. Mixing religion with ever-so-old traditional practices has been producing deadly ideologies that even science could not combat. Let us not go far from the reality that, as human being who are all the time eager for more power,  we have gained so much power using religion and God as a shield to our ideologies. We produce and reproduce religious remarks that fit the current needs for our politics, culture, and above all our greed. Among the deadly thoughts we have produced is that God hates, curses and punishes certain kinds of people. May be he does, because there are horrendous amounts of obscene and evil acts that God will not accept which are caused by people in this earth.

Is being gay makes one evil person? As gay man, am I doomed to live with guilt and self-hatred for something I did not choose? Did God create me in a perfect shape just to discover that He has made a mistake at the end, for people like me are "hated" by God? When you reflect upon those questions, you can't help getting your thoughts slingshot further to learn in deeper details about Islam to face fanatics calling for the death of gay people. I am not a Muslim preacher, nor do I know quite lots about Islam as professional scholar, but I know enough to conclude that Muslims who are convinced that Allah will burn homosexuals terribly missed the point about Islam. Do Muslim really realize that every Koranic verse starts with "Merciful Allah", “in the name of God, The Beneficent, The Merciful” (Koran 1:1). Do we often stop to reflect on the meaning of that? Do we try to make sense of its implications in the current world? Killing is absolutely contradicting anything that is close to mercy. There is no need stating that, but why Muslims are obsessed with killing gay people, and other infidels? There should be a need again to look at some of the Koranic texts to see that as gay people we are human beings as equal in rights as every person in the world. “O people, we created you from the same male and female, and rendered you distinct peoples and tribes, that you may recognize one another. The best among you in the sight of GOD is the most righteous. GOD is Omniscient, Cognizant.” Allah has created male and female. He did not specifically indicate anything that is between male and female, nor does the state of being homosexual suggests that we are neither males nor females. However, he rendered us distinct. He made us into different people, in colour, size, and sexuality etc. He did not refer to us as straight/ gay males or females. The fact that we are different implies different interpretations in itself. Let us not remain stagnant to the era of the Prophet when no significance of science and development were.

Why would people in power use religion in a stagnant way and unchanging dogma? First, history has proved that religion has been being the most powerful source of conflicts since humanity existed on this earth. The reason for that is the political use of religion. Muslim or Christian Crusades were never for the sake of spreading the faith each part took into the battle, but rather were for territorial expansion and embracing more labour, trade and agricultural work power to serve the building of unified empires. Second, religion is unifying, but secluding the minority that politicians can control and oppress under their states' ideologies and laws. Islam does not belong to any state, but ideologies do belong to each regime. As gay people, we can still belong to any kind of religion as I belong to Islam myself, but I cannot belong to Morocco, because, simply, its regime has its own Islam that is as different as to other Muslim countries'. Allah does not hate me, but my Morocco's ideology of Islam does.

Morocco was once a paradise for all gay people that were prosecuted in Europe, especially gays. During the rule of General Franco, gay people in Spain fled to several Moroccan cities, especially Tangier and Marrakech.
Tangier during the 1940s and 1950s embraced all those looking for freedom and peace of mind. It added an exotic charm to the world of gay life which prospered and gained its flaunt culture in Tangier. Gay men around the world should know that Morocco once was the right place to be.

Announcement: Our team is writing a letter to the Moroccan Ministry of Justice and Liberties to decriminalize homosexuality in Morocco. We would like all gay people and LGBT supporter and sympathizers in Morocco and around the world to write and say what they would like to say to the Ministry, and why it is important for them that homosexuality should be legal in Morocco. You could comment your opinion in Arabic, English, French or any other language. Gays, straights, we should all be one against injustice. Looking forward to hearing from you! Peace!!

Beautiful poem set in Morocco. It just shows how difficult life is for gay people in this country.

Poem set in Morocco

Abdelfatteh

by E. A. Lacey
You put your hand on my shoulder
and n'aie pas peur you said.
Hot windless night. We were watching
a street-fight in Marrakech.
You smiled at me, young hill-boy
(who thought that you were twenty,
but you just might have been 18),
and you showed two broken teeth.
We drank tea on the corner,
where you taught me Arab letters,
and somehow we went to the hammam,
where you rubbed me down and fucked me.
Then you told me your life story,
all about your mountain village,
how you once had been a student,
but had fallen out with a teacher
(lost promise of your family)
and you'd been expelled, and, now
you slept nights in the cafes
and smoked kif all the hot day
and scoured the town for tourists.

I went with you to your village
in the mountains near Marrakech.
I saw the barren hillside
(but to you it was blooming).
I saw the bordj you lived in
with the stable underneath it
for the camels and the donkeys,
and the sheep, the goats, the turkeys.
I met your grave, stern father,
upright in his blue djellaba.
I drank tea and smoked kif there.

I met your other mother
(as you called your father's new wife).
And you washed my hands with water
poured from a silver pitcher
(the custom of the country),
and we slept on Berber carpets
that were woven by your sisters.

And so I came to trust you.
And so I took you travelling,
And then we fell in prison
in a town called Mogador.
And n'aie pas peur you told me,
maktoub , it was all written,
but, inchallah, we'll get out,
though you yourself were frightened.

For two long months we rotted
in a prison by the seaside,
where the gulls laughed every morning,
and the muezzin wailed at daybreak,
as the key turned in the iron door,
and the lice and bedbugs ate us,
and we lived on beans and lentils,
and you sold the shoes I'd bought you
and the blue shirt you were wearing
to get more food from the kitchen
so that I could eat " European."
And at nights you slept beside me,
(on the cold floor, rough wool blankets)
and you put your arms around me
to protect me from the others
(for there were forty others).

Days, we walked around in circles
in that courtyard with eight olive-trees,
hand in hand, like all the others
(the custom of the country),
sat and listened to the imams
(though of course I understood nothing),
while the armed guards prowled the rooftops.

The last time that I saw you
was as I was leaving prison
and we kissed each other on both cheeks
(the custom of the country),
while my police escorts looked on,
and you grabbed my hand and told me
" remember, I'm your brother,"
and I marched out of the doorway,
for I was being deported.

Now, back on your douar,
you send me Christmas cards and little letters
(decorated with calligraphy and flowers)
in your funny French, saying things like this:
Mon cher frere, si tu veux m'aider, aide-moi
a ce moment, n'importe de quelle chose,
de l'argent, si tu peux, ou des vêtements
anciens, ou une cartouche de cigarettes.
And I sometimes send you money,
and I hope it makes you happy,
for I won't be going back there.

And I wander
from country to country, purposeful, purposeless,
but sometimes
even now
at night
in my hotel-room of dreams
I hear across the darkness n'aie pas peur
feel
the small protecting body close to mine,
warm arms around my waist, quick, quiet breath,
the hard cock pulsing, saying " let me in,"
brief spasm of union and separation.
Abd-el-Fatteh.
Servant
of the Open Door.