Moroccans protest in 2011 during the Arab Spring. Image: Wikipedia

Solidarity with Moroccan protests

Moroccans have taken to the streets following the brutal murder of a fisherman by police.

Members of rs21 have watched with awe as, again, the Moroccan people has taken to the streets in organised opposition against state violence and the greed of an unelected regime: against the fact that the Moroccan royal-state controls ‘phosphates and two oceans, and still lives are miserable’, as protestors are chanting.

The current wave of revolt began with the murder by the police of martyr Mohsin Fakri on Friday 29 October, in the northeast town of al-Hoceima. Fisherman Fakri refused to pay a bribe to the police, who then threw his catch into a refuse truck. Mohsin tried to retrieve it, the truck’s mechanism was started – “crush him“, as the police said – and he was killed. rs21 deplores Fakri’s murder, and recognises it as indicative of the regime’s usual mode of operation.

We support the protests that began in al-Hoceima – thousands and thousands joined Fakri’s 22km funeral march – and all those in the cities and towns across the country since. We especially admire the activists in the February 20 Movement – the embodiment of the struggle against the Moroccan state during 2011 and 2012 – and their continued efforts to re-make the country and the world about them.

We note that revolutionary groups in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria have all expressed their total support for their comrades in Morocco. rs21 recognises the need to extend the same offer of revolutionary friendship.

rs21 together and without qualification support the Moroccan working class’ protests against state violence specifically, and more generally against a state and system that cannot – by its nature, cannot – provide “liberty, dignity and social justice“. They are risking everything in protest against the state and capital’s inability to provide a world fit for them and, too, showing us what a new world – if it’s to be – will be made of: an implacable solidarity between us.