Rabat – Police in Casablanca have opened an investigation after a video of a man sexually assaulting a young woman went viral on social media.
According to a statement from the General Directorate of National Security (DGSN), police are investigating the rape attempt of a young woman in Ain Sebaa, Casablanca. The statement added that police in Casablanca had not received a complaint.
The incident comes less than two months after Morocco implemented Law 103-13 on gender-based discrimination on September 12. The law criminalizes sexual harassment in public.
Several activists believe that the law is full of loopholes. For Stephanie Willman Bordat, an international human rights lawyer, the struggle does not end here.
She told Morocco World News in September that the law should also facilitate a reporting procedure for women wishing to file complaints of gender-based discrimination.
The law was enacted on the heel of several widely-publicized sexual assaults which caused outrage in Morocco.
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The latest case to receive wide attention was that of Khadija. The 17-year-old said she was kidnapped and raped by more than 12 men for two months this summer. Her alleged rapists also tattooed her body against her will, she said, writing their names on her skin.
In Casablanca in 2017, a group of teenagers physically harassed a young woman on a bus.
In September, a group of Moroccan activists, women and girls, launched a campaign under the hashtag Masaktach (I will not be silenced) to call for the boycott of songs by Saad Lamjarred, a Moroccan popstar who is awaiting trial on two counts of rape in France.
The campaign has become a broader movement to denounce sexual harassment and assault. The movement aims to track women’s struggle and violence against women in Morocco.
The movement is similar to the MeToo hashtag, an international movement against sexual assault, rape, and harassment.
Read Also: #Masaktach Brings Attention to Sexual Harassment, Assault in Morocco
