26 March 2006

Death in Morocco

who kills Moroccans ?


Death in morocco seems to be everywhere, like other places in the world but there are deaths that happen because of anger and politics. People who killed themselves in the suicide bombings of Casablanca in May 16th have left more than 43 other people killed. The killings continue to other areas like the gendarmeries and police stations. Killing happen at night in the dark in neighborhoods where police think are out of the circles they are responsible for.
When asked to provide security for the villagers, the Moroccan government ignored people in Ait Ourir. Now after demonstrations and arrests and the assassination of Hamid. After the loss of lives police took the initial action of bringing some police men to arrest the gangs that brought insecurity and assassinations to the village.
Now unemployed university graduates organize collective suicide ceremonies to take their lives and this is happening on the street in front of parliament buildings.
This is not just a phenomenon, and it is not a thing psychologists could ever understand. It is beyond what they think is a social trend . It is the absence of valuable meaning of life, Moroccas cal it Hogra. It is not as simple as “jobs or death” which these unemployed university graduates write on the banners. It is the meaning of life that is lost with dignity and self pride that can not be explained by scholars or news papers, it has to e experienced.
This is very different from the debate in Switzerland round the right to die and whether it is ethical to assist people who want to put an end to their lives. [Read more]. In many areas in Japan this is called a trend. As reported by the ABC website. “Total strangers making meticulous arrangements online to kill themselves en masse. The group suicides usually take place inside sealed cars, where people burn charcoal so that they will die of carbon monoxide poisoning.” (abcnews.go.com).
In Morocco it is still the case but the government is not taking measures to stop it. Knowing it can be stopped. However unemployment is only the apparent surface cause of what is happening. If we look at the list of people who attempted to take their lives in Rabat, most of them have children and some of them were getting married this means that these people have lives that they value. The thing is weather their life is valued by a political regime that imposes a culture of submission and enslavement. Many other people commit suicide for other reasons when they feel they are so damaged that any kind of fixing is impossible but to hold slogans like “work or death” is more powerful than the job and more powerful than death. Seeking death as a form of liberation is a thing that has nor been addressed by any of the Moroccan thinkers or politicians.
Now it is high time we looked at the reasons beyond slogans. If “Al-Hogra” can be translated into other languages, then the world would understand what it is to be Moroccan and what it means to seek freedom in death.
Moroccans love life.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hello. I was interested in reading this article.
In my view the main reason of such problem is unemployment. Moroccan want to work, to earn money in order to survive. But government do not give them such opportunity, that is why people ought to attract government's attention.