Monthly Archives: November 2016

Morocco Rising : Behind the Demonstrations in Morocco – by Richard Greeman

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Morocco Rising : Behind the Demonstrations in Morocco

By Richard Greeman
On Wednesday Oct. 26, the well-known Moroccan historian and human rights activist Maâti Monjib and five of his colleagues were hauled into the High Court at Rabat to answer charges of “attacks on national security” and “receiving foreign funds.” They are facing up to five years in prison for their activities as investigative journalists, human rights advocates and members of the “February 20th Movement” — the Moroccan version of “Arab Spring” of 2011.
Two days later, anti-government demonstrations spread across Morocco after social media spread the story of  Mousine Fikri, a fishmonger crushed to death inside a garbage truck as he tried to block the destruction of a truckload of his fish confiscated by police. The February 20th Movement, long assumed dormant, sprang back to life and took the lead in organizing the protests, which spread to 40 cities.
These two events – the Monjib trial and the demonstrations sweeping the country — are hardly unrelated. Monjib and his co-defendants, journalists, media activists, and fighters for human rights, were already a thorn in the side of the regime even before the 2011 rising. Since then they and their colleagues have courageously struggled for media freedom while building the on-line infrastructure of information and interaction that makes possible real-time on-the-ground mobilizations like those taking place this week. Their efforts have not gone unrewarded, despite years of government harassment including base defamation campaigns in official media, bogus arrests on morals charges and the current treason trial. As today’s headlines illustrate, social media remain a potent tool in the hands of the oppressed, and the authoritarian regime of King Mohammed VI had “good” reasons to persecute media activists like Monjib and his friends.
                                    A Long Tug of War
The mastery of social media has apparently leveled the playing field in Morocco’s  long struggle for democracy and human rights. On the ground, it helps coordinate mass mobilizations challenging the regime in the streets, demanding an end to corruption, brutality, and injustice summed up by the cry (and hash tag) of Hoga! (oppression). His Majesty, out of the country on an official visit, has not returned to take charge of the emergency. In any case the authorities dare not attempt to repress the demonstrations and sit-ins by force on the eve of the upcoming COP conference in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh, at which the Monarchy’s international reputation as a progressive island of stability in the Arab world is at stake. The timing couldn’t be worse for Mohammed VI.
The tug of war on the ground is matched by propaganda war in the air in which for once both sides are well armed. The regime controls all the official “vertical” media and can spin the truth in any direction. The popular movement ripostes with its Internet-based, horizontal social media and investigative journalist-bloggers. Here’s how the story of Mousine Fikri’s death plays out in the rival media.
The regime is going through the motions of satisfying the call for justice without actually seeking justice. The Royal Prosecutor in the town of Al Hoseima noisily prosecuting eleven officials. This made the N.Y.Times. But don’t look too closely. To calm the fury, the eleven police and fishery officials have been locked up, but for “forgery” (in fact faulty paperwork in recording the incident). They will be released when things calm down. However the Prosecutor is not investigating the question of who gave the order to turn on the crushing machine at the back of the empty garbage truck. (The fish had not yet been loaded). According to the independent on-line journal Le Desk, this operation requires the cooperation of two workers: the driver to turn on the electricity in the cab and his assistant to pull the lever at the back of the truck, where Mr. Fiki and his friends were presumably visible. Eyewitnesses have been quoted saying they heard someone give the order: “crush him.”
The authorities are classing Mr. Fiki’s death as an “accident.” In the social media, it is called a “state-crime.” Few believe the regime will keep its promises to “investigate” Fiki’s death: after five years the Interior Ministry still has not found who was responsible for the deaths of 15 protesters on Feb. 20, 2011 — the date which gave the popular movement its name. The regime, through its official and allied websites, has also been flooding the web with disinformation designed to confuse and discredit what the protestors and the independent media are saying. These wild stories are not likely to be believed by anyone but dedicated loyalist.
            Background to this Struggle
The democratic uprising in Morocco (also known as “Revolution2.0” or “the social media revolution”) was not defeated in the Spring of 2011, only stalemated in its struggle with the makhzen (or deep state) that rules supreme behind the façade of a progressive, pro-Western monarchy, based on well-controlled moderate Islam (the King is also Commander of the Faithful). In July 2011, Mohammed V succeeded in diverting the broad democratic movement’s demands into electoral channels by proposing a new, more “liberal” constitution in a snap referendum.
This “compromise” Constitution gained a hardly credible 98.7% of the votes, and has never been enforced, au contraire. As the democracy spring faded into memory, the makhzen, thirsty for revenge, began tightening the screws on February 20th and Human Rights activists and above all on the independent investigative journalists, who expose corruption and oppression. For example my good friend Ali Anouzla, the independent journalist who in 2011 first brought the news of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt to the Moroccans, was imprisoned in 2013 for “inciting terrorism” (in fact for exposing the corruption of the Monarchy)
Meanwhile, during 2009-2016 over at the Center for Study and Communication in Rabat, hundreds of young journalists and human rights activists were being trained to use the electronic tools of citizen-journalism, in particular the App known as StoryMaker (mentioned in the indictment against Maâti Monjib and his students). The Center was founded by Monjib (Professor of History at the University of Rabat) and named for the tolerant medieval Arab philosopher Ibn Rochd (Averroes in English).
                                                Repression
As repression increased in 2015, the government forced the Center to close. Monjib, an internationally known scholar who frequently attends conferences, was stopped at the Casablanca airport and banned from traveling. Only at the end Monjib’s 20-day public hunger strike did the government agree to lift the ban. Next came a series of groundless accusations culminating in the Rabat High Court trial for “attacks on state security” and “mishandling funds,” a trial that once again was adjourned last week, perhaps because there is no evidence.
Another reason why the regime is trying to discredit Monjib is that he edited a book entitled « Islamists versus secularists : Dialogues and Confrontations » and brought representatives of two independant Islamic Parties together with Socialist and Secularist leaders on his campus. This was the first public dialogue between the two sides, which have often settled their differences in blood, and was covered by Al Jazeera and other serious media. These meetings continued and resulted in the rapprochement of the two sides in a common pro-democracy movement, such as has recently been achieved in Tunisia. The Makhzen, whose policy is “divide and rule,” rightly considers this rapprochement a threat to its hegemony.
As a result of these activities, Monjib has been the object of a sustained campaign of calumny aimed at destroying his reputation as a scholar, human rights activist and man of peace. Pro-government websites continue to spew filth about Monjib’s impeccable personal and financial life. Monjib himself analyzed these techniques in an article published before he himself became a victim: First, activists are attacked in media close to the secret services so as to discredit them and prepare public opinion for what is coming next. He distinguished three types of slander: sex for Islamists, drugs for young activists and money for Left personalities. Next are publically accused of “high treason,” “espionage,” “drug possession,” “tax evasion,” “illegal business,” etc., often changing the charges and keeping them tied up in court.
A defense committee (supported by Noam Chomsky) has been established in France, and funds and support are very much needed. Please sign up at solidaritemonjib@gmail.com (dollars and pounds accepted).
                                                Theory and Practice
Among the ibn Rochd Center’s most promising graduates are two of Monjib’s young co-defendants before the High Court of Rabat: Samad Iach and Hicham Mansouri. Last year, the scholarly, slight Mansouri was arrested, convicted and sent to prison a trumped-up charge of living off prostitution. Iach and Mansouri are now in exile in Paris, where they are working as journalists and studying communications at the University. Mansouri’s thesis-in-preparation documents how on-line discussion of democracy and revolution actually preceded the revolts of 2011 and shows how “people with a common interest in democracy built solid networks and organized political actions.” He concludes, “armed with their Smartphones connected to the Internet, thousands of young activists and citizen-journalists have succeeded in getting around censorship and providing information in real time while encouraging sharing, comments and interactions among the citizen-users.” This is clearly bad news for corrupt despots everywhere, Morocco not excluded.
According to Forbes, Mohammed VI is the richest man in North Africa and the fifth richest on the continent. The King has control over and profits from the national economy in every sphere, for example phosphates, Morocco’s most profitable export, as well as the fishing industry. His Majesty has imposed an electoral system which makes it impossible for any party to win an absolute majority, and the new Constitution, devised by a commission all of whose members were nominated by the King, leaves all power in his hands. Unlike his father, Hassan II, who during his long reign (1961-1999) was infamous for his use of kidnapping, torture, and long-term imprisonment, Mohammed VI, a progressive, modern autocrat, prefers new methods of repression, similar to those used by the ‘progressive’ and pro-Western Aliev dictatorship in post-Communist Azerbaijan, considered one of the worst human rights violators in the world.[1] Mohammed VI has excellent reasons to want to take revenge on Professor Monjib and his friends, and today His Majesty is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Stay tuned.
Although the world looks dark these days, the continuing tug of war in Morocco inspires hope… and solidarity. Please contact: solidaritemonjib@gmail.com
Nov. 1, 2016

MATSOUANIST RESISTANCE & INDEPENDENCE IN CONGO-BRAZZAVILLE

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Meike de Goede  is a lecturer in African History & Anthropology at the Leiden University Institute for History. She works on silenced history and memory in Congo-Brazzaville and former French Equatorial Africa. This paper is based on interviews with witnesses in Congo-Brazzaville and archival research in the Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence.

 

Just before the Presidential elections of June 1959, several Matsouanist leaders, a religious-political movement, were rounded up from their homes in Brazzaville’s townships of Poto Poto and Bacongo and taken to an empty factory building in M’Pila. In the weeks following, the youth wing of UDDIA, a political party, launched a violent campaign against the Matsouanists because they refused to support Fulbert Youlou, the leader of UDDIA. Many Matsouanists sought refuge in the factory building as well. On the early morning of 29 July 1959 the Matsouanists were put on transport to places far away from the native land of the Lari, the ethnic group to which the Matsouanists belonged. The process of deportation was chaotic and violent; 35 people died and at least 100 were injured. Only in 1965, after the toppling of Youlou’s regime, were the Matsouanists granted amnesty so they could return home.

 

The Matsouanists were followers of André Matsoua, who had founded an Amicale in 1926. When Matsoua and several other leaders of the Amicale were arrested in 1930 and tried for swindling, the people of the Pool region, where Amicale had many supporters, started a campaign of passive resistance. They ceased all forms of collaboration with the authorities until Matsoua would be released: they refused to pay taxes, to carry identity cards, to produce cash crops, and refused to accept material gifts such as food and drink at festivities. Their resistance did not end after Matsoua died in prison in 1942. From that moment on, the Matsouanists framed their support for Matsoua in messianic terms, thereby transforming Matsoua into a prophet who would eventually save the people of Congo. Until that moment, the Matsouanists would put their life on hold, and became politically apathetic. In the late 1950s, their resistance no longer only frustrated the French colonial administration, but also Fulbert Youlou, the rising political star who would become the first President of independent Congo. Youlou was a Lari from the Pool himself. In a political context in which politics was (and still is) based on a North-South division, the Matsouanists were Youlou’s natural support base, and their apathy thus a threat to his pursuit of power. It was not the French colonial authorities that finally crushed the Matsouanists, it was Youlou and his political movement.

 

The sad story of the Matsouanists is often framed in ethnic-regional violence. Political conflict between MSA (Opangault) and UDDIA (Youlou), between Northerners and Southerners, between M’Bochi and Lari did indeed occur in the context of run-up to full independence. However, the aggression against the Matsouanists did not come from the M’Bochi or the MSA supporters, but from within UDDIA, in other words, people with the same regional and ethnic identity. Youlou had previously drawn much of his support from the Matsouanists. Many of the agitated youth wing members that attacked the Matsouanists must have had relatives among them or even roots in the movement themselves. (Former) Matsouanists told me how they were attacked in their houses. For instance, a man told me what he experienced as a child:

“It was very tragic, they were treated so badly. I was only a little boy then, but I have seen what has happened to my father and mother. They came to the house. They went from house to house, looking for Matsouanists. When I came home from school, I saw that. They found my father and took him. He fell, and he was bleeding from his head. They beat him. I found my mother crying in a room in the house. They had taken all her clothes and left her naked. She was crying. She had wrapped a mosquito net around her naked body to cover-up her nakedness. My older brother quickly declared that he was the owner of the house; otherwise we would have lost the house as well. I have decided to always stay in this house, on the soil where my parents had suffered so much. I still live there.” (author’s interview, Brazzaville August 2015)

 

With fathers sent to prison, leaving behind their wives who were banned from the market so they could not support their children, and with children being banned from school, the violent campaign against the Matsouanists ripped families apart and left injuries which still affect people today.

 

What the story of the Matsouanists tells us, is that the transition to independence in former French Equatorial Africa was not so smooth and peaceful as has often been assumed. The Matsouanists became casualties of this not-so-peaceful transition. Paradoxically, the political apathy of the Matsouanists made them into an unlucky focal point of a complex political process that they tried so hard to steer away from. Even more so, the violence they suffered was actually not about them and their ideas. Neither was it about anti-colonial resistance, which is how the Matsouanists have often been framed. The Matsouanists pursued a different political project then the nationalists that were scheming in preparation for full independence. The latter was a political project that was not defined in their terms, and thus they refused to cooperate. A general feature of nationalist politics in the era of independence in Africa is that it was mass-based and mass supported, at least, that is what history books tell us. Youlou could not tolerate those that did not join in. But the events also suggest a generational conflict, with many youth actively disengaging from the political objectives and tactics of their parents’ generation, and embracing political modernity that independence promised. The case raises questions about how we understand the politics of the era of independence in Africa beyond ethnic politics, mass based nationalist discourses, and indeed beyond anti-colonial resistance. To what extent does our interpretative framework on social, political and religious movements in the age of independence in Africa reproduce – and reify – colonial (and Youliste) imaginaries. We have for long overlooked dynamics and details, such as those surrounding the fate of the Matsouanists in Brazzaville. It seems we have only begun unravelling the history of the End of Empire in Africa – much, much work remains to be done.