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Join on Telegram Rabat – Driss El Yazami, the President of the National Council of Human Rights (CNDH), has called for dialogue to resolve the crisis of Al Hoceima and the greater Rif region.
“There should be an institutional and inclusive dialogue in the Rif,” said El Yazami in an interview with French magazine Jeune Afrique.
El Yazami also said that the CNDH can be one of the institutions pushing for dialogue, which he said must be institutional and include all parties, including protesters who still refuse all forms of dialogue with the government and elected officials.
When asked about the controversy that surrounded the CNDH’s report on allegations of torture made by detained Rif activists, El Yazami avoided getting into details.
“I can’t talk about the content of the report,” he said. “We’re a constitutional institution that did its job. We can’t confirm or deny that there were violations of human rights [in Rif].”
He added that local residents in Al Hoceima and its neighboring towns were generally able to express themselves and demonstrate peacefully, explaining that the recent tension in the region does not deny this fact.
In early July, the CNDH report on allegations of torture was leaked to news site Barlamane. Thewebsite, which is said to have close ties with security officials, slammed the council,which stated that medical examination of the detainees revealed they were indeed victims of violence and verbal abuse during their arrest and detention andthat these incidents should be investigated.
Barlamane accused the CNDH of feeding the fire of tension in Al Hoceima and questioned the accuracy of the conclusions of the report due to grammatical and factual mistakes in the document.
