Morocco, Families and friends of political detainees, Makhzen, political prisoners, Hirak, Rif,
Families and friends of prisoners of conscience in Morocco observed a 24-hour collective hunger strike on Sunday to denounce the continued detention of their relatives and express their indignation at the untenable situation of several political detainees in prisons. of the Makhzen, according to Moroccan media.
This is, according to the strikers, “a step to draw the attention of those responsible for their demands expressed years ago, namely the release of their relatives, in particular the detainees of the Hirak of the Rif”, report local media on Monday. The protesters began their action in Rabat, at the headquarters of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights, the largest non-governmental organization for the defense of human rights in Morocco.
The strikers explained in a statement that the 24-hour hunger strike aims to “alert the authorities on the fate of the detainees, and on the suffering also experienced by the families on the day of Eid al-Adha which represents an opportunity to get together, an annual meeting of which the families of detainees are deprived, theirs being behind bars”.
In the press release, the families and friends of the prisoners of conscience, headed by Ahmed Zefzafi, father of the leader of the Hirak of the Rif, Nasser Zefzafi, declared: “We wish by this symbolic step to remind public opinion of the pain and the sorrows felt by the families and friends of political detainees, on the occasion of Eid and the rest of the year. It turns out that we, too, are victims of the political repression exercised once morest our relatives unjustly detained on the basis of false accusations”.
In the same document, they demanded “an end to political detention and the suffering associated with it, and the release of all prisoners of conscience”. It should be noted that the state of health of the leader of the Hirak of the Rif, Nasser Zefzafi, continues to deteriorate. Zefzafi, the father, had previously warned of the deterioration of his son’s state of health due to the inhuman conditions of his detention.
“My son’s health has seriously deteriorated. He suffers from three chronic illnesses including asthma and allergy. He now only owes his survival to the drugs he takes,” Ahmed Zefzafi said in a video. “My son did not suffer from any disease before his arrest following the events in the Rif. The illnesses he suffers from caught them due to the inhuman conditions of his detention in Casablanca prison for 15 months now,” remarked Zefzafi Sr. “I call on the Moroccan authorities to put an end to the suffering of our children and ours too. Our children have been suffering for six years and so have we,” he said.
It should be remembered that this is not the first time that Ahmed Zefzafi has denounced the sentence and the inhuman conditions of detention of his son and those of the other detainees in the Hirak du Rif. In a previous statement to the Spanish newspaper “El Pais”, Ahmed Zefzafi had denounced the sentences handed down by Moroccan justice once morest the leaders of Hirak du Rif, stressing that they were “the worst the world has ever known”.
After a trial that lasted eight months, the Moroccan courts handed down sentences ranging from 1 to 20 years in prison once morest Nasser Zefzafi and 52 of his compatriots. Nasser Zefzafi and the other leader, Nabil Amhajik, each received 20 years in prison. The Rif Hirak broke out following the death in 2016 of fishmonger Mohsen Fikri, crushed in a dumpster while trying to oppose the seizure of his goods.
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