Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Years of Lead
Along with the growing gap between the rich and the poor and a mounting tax bill to cov-
er Morocco's military spending in the Western Sahara, King Hassan II's suppression of
dissent fuelled further resentment among his subjects. By the 1980s, the critics of the king
included journalists, trade unionists, women's-rights activists, Marxists, Islamists, Berbers
advocating recognition of their culture and language, and the working poor - in other
words, a broad cross-section of Moroccan society.
Queen al-Kahina had one distinct advantage over the Umayyads: second sight. The downside?
She foretold her own death at the hands of her enemy.
The last straw for many came in 1981, when official Moroccan newspapers casually an-
nounced that the government had conceded to the International Monetary Fund to hike
prices for staple foods. For the many Moroccans subsisting on the minimum wage, these
increases meant that two-thirds of their income would be spent on a meagre diet of
sardines, bread and tea. When trade unions organised protests against the measure, gov-
ernment reprisals were swift and brutal. Tanks rolled down the streets of Casablanca and
hundreds were killed, at least 1000 wounded, and an estimated 5000 protesters arrested in
a nationwide
laraf
, or roundup.
Far from dissuading dissent, the Casablanca Uprising galvanised support for govern-
ment reform. Sustained pressure from human-rights activists throughout the 1980s
achieved unprecedented results in1991, when Hassan II founded the Equity and Recon-
ciliation Commission to investigate human-rights abuses that occurred during his own
reign - a first for a king. In his very first public statement as king upon his father's death
in 1999, Mohammed VI vowed to right the wrongs of the era known to Moroccans as the
Years of Lead. The commission has since helped cement human-rights advances, award-
ing reparations to 9280 victims of the Years of Lead by 2006.
Talk Morocco ofers frank, irreverent commentary about Moroccan identity, democracy, red
tape, gender relations and more at
www.talkmorocco.net
.
