Rabat – Women of all ages and social classes gathered on Wednesday at the United Nations square in Casablanca and in front of the Parliament in Rabat in a show of solidarity with the victim of the bus sexual assault case.
A call for sit-ins quickly spread to cities all over the country after their announcement Monday, following the release of a video relaying the aggressive sexual assault of a mentally challenged girl on a bus in the city of Casablanca.
#sitin à #Casablanca Les activistes féministes défendent leurs droits. pic.twitter.com/8K6VwU6MMI
— Ghalia Kadiri (@ghaliakadiri) August 23, 2017
Sit-in à Rabat pour les droits des femmes #violencessexuelles #harcelement #viol #maroc pic.twitter.com/5eJU9QOIIH
— Dom Guégan Bochel (@Domydom) August 23, 2017
Launched by a group of Moroccan young feminists, hundreds of citizens came to the demonstration to join in denouncing rape and sexual harassment in Morocco.
“This concerns all of us, we can no longer keep silent!” a father of two young girls told Morocco World News at Rabat’s sit-in. “I cannot express enough my terror and fear for my girls, I feel obliged to escort them everywhere nowadays. The streets are not safe, the schools are not safe, the bus are safe. What are we supposed to do?”
Branding their banners high over their head, the women’s slogans were loud and clear. Poignant messages are written in big bold letters: “No is No!” “Laws for men and rape for women,” “We are not afraid, liberate public spaces,” “No to the culture of rape!”
Their chants filled the Mohammed V avenue, as men and women joined their voices in outrage at the situation of women’s rights in Morocco.
Through staging the sit-ins, the women intended to express that the behavior of passive witnesses to sexual assault is no better than that of its perpetrators. “We are afraid to leave our homes,” said one of the organizers of the event, as “not only will we get assaulted, but no one will come to help us.”
Their desperation is palpable, especially amid what they denounced as the negligence of official authorities. “The 103.13 bill against sexual assault and violence done to women is gathering dust in the drawers of the parliament since 2013,” said the spokeswoman of a feminist collective in Rabat.
“Meanwhile, the Minister in charge women’s issues has a reaction completely disconnected from reality,” she exclaims, “not to mention Mustapha Ramid [Minister of State for Human Rights] who downplayed the situation by stating that sexual harassment existed all over the world,” the young activist added.
“How many women have to be raped, have to die or kill themselves before the government finally does something?” shouted the women amid the mass. “What about the others? What about those whose assaults were not filmed or documented? What justice for them?”
In a footage relayed massively on social media Sunday night, a group of teenagers, bare-chested, violently jostle a young woman in tears in a bus, touching her intimate parts while laughing. Half-naked, the victim shouts in distress while the bus continues to roll without any passengers intervening. The incident took place on August 18, and the video was posted on social media two days later.
The six aggressors, aged 15 to 17, were apprehended and placed under surveillance on Monday August 21, the police announced in a statement.
