By Hashemi Salhi
On December 18, 1975, while the entire Muslim world was celebrating Eid al-Adha, an unspeakable drama, as sudden as it was violent, unfolded before our eyes, and which represents, to this day, one of the most tragic pages of the contemporary history of the Kingdom of Morocco. This socio-historical tragedy, a real “ refuse – to use the expression of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish – saw the collective expulsion andmilitary hand
, of more than 350,000 Moroccans living in Algeria for generations. They were stripped, without any form of trial, of their property and their lives, to be deported to the Algerian-Moroccan border. For the government of President Boumediene, it was a question of exercising violent and ruthless reprisals once morest Moroccans anchored in this Maghreb land which was theirs. That of their birth and their growth, with which they were united, in the same fight once morest colonialism and for the independence of brotherly countries.
This brutal collective expulsion is in fact the interface of the glorious and peaceful Green March. In this sense, it is a historic, arbitrary and illegal forfeiture under international law, and represents a clear violation of human rights. On the eve of the solemn commemoration of the Green March, denial and oblivion are impossible, faced with such a crime once morest humanity. We are left with the irrefutable duty of memory, which is a moral right for all: perpetual, inalienable and imprescriptible.
“We left the last meal on the fire
Of the condemned without trial
And the frugal one of the children
Who were waiting for the party and not the ogre of barbarism
We made Lent the day of the feast of the sacrifice
To ward off the voracity of the slaughterers and save the last beasts.
Kneaded bread left in the ordinary oven
In the joy of sharing
In the beauty of the nigella
And the sacredness of fleur de sel.
Left the bitterness of the days
By the fireside of heresy
And outraged memory. »
(Hachemi Salhi, extract from “The Conference of Expelled Birds” – Story illustrated by Aziza Filali, Editions Babel com, Rabat, 2016. Arabic translation, 2019).
In dead silence, the Algerian government went so far as to evacuate children, pupils, middle and high school students and students of Moroccan origin, within schools and universities, sacred houses of knowledge and enlightenment. The testimonies reported by the victims of this expulsion give a chronology of the facts, commensurate with the abuses suffered by the peoples despoiled of their native land, including the Palestinian people, and by all the peoples of the world who have endured the pain of the ‘Exodus.
Today, how to maintain the memory of such a historic event with the Moroccan nation? The combined elements of this historical memory call for a significant commitment by the Moroccan State in its full national sovereignty, particularly in terms of reparation and justice, international advocacy and the inclusion of this tragedy at the heart of popular historical memory.
The necessary transitional justice
We know that this unwavering commitment has sometimes been delayed due to various contingencies, including a lack of dialogue between the countries concerned, and of explicit recognition by the initiators of this tragedy. In this sense, an opening is possible through transitional justice, an operational process supported by international institutions and non-governmental organizations, for thirty years, to open the necessary dialogue, build a lasting reconciliation, and rebuild the peace between two brother countries carried by a community of destinies and a common history of struggles for independence. Transitional justice would have the virtue of giving – following a hiatus of forty-seven years of stagnation – a voice, visibility and status to the victims. It would make it possible to offer the latter rapid access to the justice, equity and dignity that are due to them, according to a process of reparation and appeasement.We recall that it took until April 2010 for a United Nations body, the Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, to recognize the seriousness and extent of the damage suffered by Moroccans expelled from Algeria, and make public its concluding observations. The UN Committee recommended that the Algerian government “take all necessary measures to restore the legitimate property of Moroccan migrant workers expelled in the past, or to offer them fair and adequate compensation, in accordance with article 15 of the Convention… and to take the appropriate measures to facilitate the reunification of these Moroccan migrant workers with their families who remained in Algeria”. (Concluding Observations on Algeria, Committee for the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, 12 th
session, 26-30 avril 2010).
It is clear that this first and significant international manifestation of recognition of the drama of the collective expulsion of Moroccans from Algeria remained a dead letter and was not followed by any effect.
A Shared House of Memory
From an ethical and solidarity perspective, Moroccan youth is a key recipient of this page in the history of Morocco. The memorial work is due to him, as the bearer of a collective future and for a shared awareness. To this day, we bring this tragedy to life through our living testimonies and our detailed writings – to remember those of Fatiha Saïdi and Mohamed Moulay, and those of Mohammed Cherfaoui and Martina Partoes – which are of great importance but which need to be reinforced by channels that are just as wide as they are diversified, institutional, media, pedagogical and educational.
In order to build an efficient process of memorial work, all citizens’ initiatives are required, to implement historical truth and ethics. They must intervene in a complementary way to the work of writing and testimonies developed in recent years, particularly within the community of Moroccans residing abroad, children of the victims of this vast expulsion. These initiatives, the spectrum of which must be as wide as possible, can relate to the visual arts, theatre, cinema, music, and all audiovisual and communication media intended for the general public.
For this memory to find its rightful place within Moroccan society and its history, a material place with strong symbolic value must be dedicated to it, supported by the Capital of the Kingdom. A public place in the form of a space for reception, exchange and debate, archiving and dissemination of the various productions linked to the drama of 1975 and still endured by thousands of families, for lack of reparation and justice . Memory is a common work. The duty of remembrance is a sacred work, as is already, rightly, the celebration of the Green March; and such as can be the commemoration of the collective expulsion of Moroccans from Algeria.
It is for us to affirm the close link between two major historical facts: the celebration of a victory, that of the glorious Green March, on the one hand, and the memory of a dark page of national history, on the other hand. A legitimate and fruitful articulation which can find its full meaning within a House of Memory of Moroccans expelled from Algeria in 1975.
Hashemi Salhi is a sociologist and writer
