Abstract
THIS CHAPTER ADDRESSES THE MOROCCAN STATE’S DISINTEREST in the interstate negotiations from 1978 and 1982 over the definition for torture.2 An examination of Morocco’s political scene indicates that this disinterest resulted from internal political issues rather than from fear of external domination.
(…) dirty boar! Put your blindfold back on, asshole! You have another ten years to be fuckable!
I see him well, the man responsible for me, looking for words to make the insult less bitter, try to smile under the blindfold, without ever knowing for sure whether your smile will be seen, interpreted, paid for harshly.
I see him, my dear master, responding to a journalist inquiring about the truth behind rumors of torture in our country; I see him, opening his eyes wide, before calling on his smile, the most charming, to declare that these rumors are nothing but tales, gossip, hearsay, nonsense even. In saying this, I don’t lose a moment in the eyes the mortal danger of which I expose myself to dare—even from the depths of my bunk, well hidden under my regulation blanket—imagine this high character playing a role that is rightfully mine. A place for everything, as the saying goes, and everything in its place. To each his own.’
—Salah el-Ouadie
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Notes
Salah el-Ouadie, Le marié, trans. Abdelhadi Drissi (Casablanca: Tarik Editions, 2001), 102–3.
Balakrishnan Rajagopal, International Law from Below (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 91.
Claude Palazzoli, Le Maroc politique, de l’indépendance à 1973 (Paris: Sinbad, 1975), 61.
Susan Waltz, “Universal Human Rights: The Contribution of Muslim States,” Human Rights Quarterly 26 (2004): 808.
José Lindgren Alves, “The Declaration of Human Rights in Postmodernity,” Human Rifhts Quarterly 22 (2000): 483.
Maâti Monjib, La monarchie marocaine et la lutte pour le pouvoir, Hassan II face à l’opposition nationale de l’indépendance à l’état d’exception (Paris: Harmattan, 1992), 7.
Jean-Noël Ferrié, “Le jeu du roi et le jeu des partis, ou le nouvel avatar marocain du paradoxe de Lampedusa,” Annuaire de l’Afrique de Nord 39 (2003): 230.
Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1970), 44–45.
Palazzoli, 61; Allal Al-Fasi, An-naqd adh-dhati (A Self-critique) (al-Qahira: Dar el-kachf Lin-nashr wa at-tibaa, 1966), 156.
Al-Fasi, An-naqd adh-dhati (A Self-critique), 151–61; Mehdi Ben Barka, Option révolutionnaire au Maroc, suivi des Écrits politiques, 1960–1965 (Paris: Masnero, 1966). 45.
Palazzoli, 63–66; Jean-Claude Santucci, Chroniques politiques marocaines, 1971–1982 (Paris: French National Centre for Scientific Research, 1985), 13–18.
Pierre Vermeren, Histoire du Maroc depuis l’indépendance (Paris: Découverte, 2002), 20–27;
Michel Camau, Pouvoir et institutions au Maghreb (Tunis: Cérès Productions, 1978), 83; Monjib, 30.
Vermeren, 20–21; Ignace Dalle, Les trois rois: La monarchie marocaine, de l’indépendance à nos jours (Paris: Fayard, 2004), 135–37;
Monjib, 110; Camau, 92–93; Rémy Leveau, Le Fellah marocain, défenseur du trône (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1985), 235.
Violette Daguerre, “La violence dans les sociétés arabes: ses mécanismes de formation et de reproduction,” in Violences et tortures dans le monde arabe, ed. Haytham Manna (Paris: Harmattan, 2000), 48–49;
Abdellah Hammoudi, Master and Disciple: The Cultural Foundations of Moroccan Authoritarianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 5, 78–79, and 139–40.
Alison Baker, Voices of Resistance: Oral Histories of Moroccan Women (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998).
Liat Kozma, “Moroccan Women’s Narratives of Liberation: a Passive Revolution?” Journal of North African Studies 1 (2003): 112–30.
Moumen Diouri, À qui appartient le Maroc? (Paris: Harmattan, 1992), 28;
Abdessalam Yasin, “Mudhakkira liman yahummuhu alamr” (“Memorandum for Those It May Concern”), last accessed January 29, 2012, http://www.radioislam.org/yassine/arab/memo.htm.
Abdellah Laroui, “Tradition et traditionalisation: Le cas du Maroc,” in Renaissance du monde arabe, colloque interarabe du Louvain, ed. Anouar Abdel Malek, Abdel Aziz Belal, and Hassan Hanafi (Gembloux: Éditions Duculot, 1972), 267. The anthropologist Paul Rabinow develops a similar argument when he argues that tradition is opposed to alienation, and not modernity, in Symbolic Domination, Cultural Form and Historical Change in Morocco (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1975), 1.
John Waterbury, Le commandeur des croyants, la monarchie marocaine et son élite, trans. Catherine Aubin (Paris: PUF, 1975), 20–21.
Mounira Charrad, States and Women’s Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 233–37.
Dalle, 44; Zakya Daoud, Féminisme et politique au Maghreb (1930–1992) (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1993), 251.
Dalle, 730–31; Zakya Daoud and Maâti Monjib, Ben Barka (Paris: Michalon, 1996), 159; Al-Fasi, 291 and 304.
Rahma Bourqia and Susan Gilson Miller, In the Shadow of the Sultan, Culture, Power, and Politics in Morocco (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 2.
Vermeren, 24; Omar Bendourou, Le pouvoir exécutif au Maroc depuis l’indépendance (Cahors: Publisud, 1986), 68–72.
Vermeren, 24; Monjib, 352. 75. Mehdi Ben Barka, Option révolutionnaire au Maroc, suivi des Écrits politiques, 1960–1965 (Paris: Maspero, 1966), 41–42.
Ahmed Boukhari, Le Secret, Ben Barka et le Maroc: Un agent des services spéciaux parle (Paris: Laffont, 2002), 19 and 22. That Moroccan authorities accused this book of serious inaccuracies (without providing specific examples), as the journalist and historian Ignace Dalle noted, compromises the credibility ofAhmed Boukhari’s testimony. However, I cite Boukhari as an authoritative source throughout this text simply because his testimony corroborates, until proven otherwise, with the hundreds of testimonies from victims and/or their family members, as well as with the reports of national and international NGOs working within the field of fundamental rights in Morocco, as we shall see later. In Dalle, 324.
Majdi Majid (Serfaty), Les luttes de classes au Maroc depuis l’indépendance (Rotterdam: Éditions Hiwar, 1987), 13–35.
OMDH, Non à la torture, Rapport alternatif de l’OMDH dans le cadre de la Convention contre la torture et autres peines ou traitements cruels, inhumains ou dégradants, novembre 1994 (Casablanca: Éditions maghrébines, 1995), 33.
AMDH, “Rapport alternatif de l’AMDH au 2ème rapport périodique du Maroc présenté au Comité contre la torture de l’ONU” (paper presented to the 67th session of the Human Rights Committee, Geneva, October 18-November 5, 1999), 43.
Makau Mutua, Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 40–42.
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© 2013 Osire Glacier
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Glacier, O. (2013). Internal Politics behind the Moroccan State’s Disinterest in a Definition for Torture. In: Universal Rights, Systemic Violations, and Cultural Relativism in Morocco. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137339614_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137339614_3
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