Rabat – Moroccan women launched a petition on Friday calling for Morocco’s government and the High Authority for Audio-visual Communication, known better as HACA, to penalize National television service, 2M, for broadcasting “tutorial instructions for females to hide bruises of domestic violence,” on its morning show “Sabahiyates,” on Wednesday.
Amid the heated scandal that the show stirred on social media, Moroccan women took to change.org to create a petition calling for all Moroccans to sign it as a moving step toward denouncing the “standardization of violence against women.”
“As Moroccan women and as feminist activists in Morocco, and in the name of all Moroccan people, we denounce the message of normalization with violence against women. We demand severe sanctions against this show, “Sabahiyat”, and the channel 2M,” the petition’s creator said.
She went on to add, “The violence should not be covered by makeup and the aggressors have to be condemned.”
Expressing their dismay at the show’s topic, the signatories supported the idea of launching a petition as part of their contribution to put an end to the phenomenon of violence against women.
“I am going to sign [the petition] because I am tired of injustice against women,” one of the signatories said.
The show’s controversial topic coincided the United Nations’ International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which is celebrated annually on November 25.
On Friday afternoon, 2M issued a communiqué on its Facebook page, explaining, “The management believes that this segment was completely inappropriate and displayed a lack of editorial understanding of the sensitivity and seriousness of the subject of violence against women.”
“Violence against women” is considered a serious phenomenon. In two previous years, courts across the kingdom recorded about 20,488 cases of violence against women, including 11,000 cases that are related to physical violence and 9187 of other types of violence.
