Moroccan Cultural Actors Are Mobilizing to Oppose Death Penalty

The campaign aims to mobilize intellectuals and artists in support of the movement for the abolition of capital punishment.

Rabat- A World Day Against the Death Penalty exhibition entitled "The right to live" will appear on October 9 at the Museum of Art and Culture of Marrakech (MACMA) on the occasion of the worldwide campaign against capital punishment.

The campaign, which advocates for the abolition of the death penalty, has been organized around the world since 2003, each year on October 10.

The “right to live” initiative reproduces the original texts of 37 Moroccan intellectuals and writers, in addition to the reproductions of works from the exhibition in defense of the abolition of what campaigners have described as an inhuman punishment.

Spearheading the initiative are Driss El Yazami, former president of the National Council for Human Rights (CNDH); Younes Ajarrai, artistic director of Marrakech 2020; and Mahi Binebine, a writer and artist who believes the death penalty to be inhumane and unfair.

The main aim of the campaign is to mobilize intellectuals and artists to use culture to broaden the popular support for the abolition of capital punishment.

A paradoxical situation

For critics, however, several paradoxes characterize the national environment in which the “right to live” mobilization is taking place. Due to a de facto moratorium on capital punishment in Morocco, Moroccans have not experienced capital executions since 1993.

Ajarrai acknowledged the paradox in an interview with Moroccan news outlet Le360. "Morocco has not practiced full death since the execution of Commissioner Tabet, 28 years ago," he conceded.

He added, however, that Morocco has been “in the midst of a paradox" every year for much of the past two decades. Every year in December, when the UN General Assembly votes on a resolution calling on all states to refrain from carrying out executions, the Moroccan government abstains from voting, Ajarrai explained.

But “this is not the only contradiction” that Moroccans live in, he continued. While the country is engaging in a de facto moratorium on executions, the court system continues to execute defendants on death row, “sending them to swell the ranks of death row inmates, who live in fear of being executed any time.”

Ajarrai invoked Article 20 of the 2011 Constitution to support his advocacy against the death penalty. “The right to life is the first right of every human being. The law protects this right,” he said.

Popular support for the death penalty

For all the legal and institutional arguments against capital punishment in Morocco, there have been regular - and numerous - occurrences of the public taking to social media to call for the resumption of executions and the retention of death penalties for despicable crimes.

“There was this horrible crime perpetrated last year in Tangier. Adnane, a little boy, was raped and then killed. At the time, passions were totally unleashed, both in social networks and in newspapers, as well as in the ranks of activists who practically called for lynching and crime,” Ajarrai recalled. “This situation made us react because we told ourselves that it was not possible that we would still be there.”

Art and social responsibility

As the artistic director of Marrakech 2020, Ajarrai spoke at length about art and social commitment, repeatedly arguing that artistic creation comes with a certain, relative imperative of social responsibility.

A discussion around this question will be the focus of the “right to live” round table on October 9, and several speakers will address it, including the philosopher Ali Benmakhlouf.

“I think that the work of plastic artists and writers already proceeds from something intimate, and also from a certain number of questions that they ask themselves in relation to human, humanist, societal, personal causes,” Ajarrai said. “They have a point of view and they must be allowed to express it with the means that are theirs, each with their own medium.”

Source: moroccoworldnews.com, Hanna Chaudhry, September 29, 2021

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