Today, Thursday 22 May 2014, The Court of First Instance in Casablanca decided a cruel sentences (years in prison for five activists and 6 months to four others and two months suspended sentence and a fine of five thousand dirhams) against young activists detained because of their affiliation to the “20 February Movement” “The Moroccan ARAB spring movement”, after participating in the Labor March on the 6^th April 2014 in Casablanca. The fabricated charges to justify this unreasonable judgment include participating in an unauthorized demonstration, and assault on police.

It is a typically political trial aimed at extinguishing the flame of the struggle in any city or village in various regions of Morocco, in order not to close to the popular powder keg that the economic and social crisis aggravate its viability of ignition, and as well as to be able to state tyranny of getting new colonial agreements with international financial institutions (as defined by the Director of The International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde in her recent visit to Rabat) and seek to sign the “new” Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade with the European Union, with its accompanying dismantling of the social and economic existing structures to the benefit of big local and foreign capital, and as well as the deepening of food dependency and raise the unemployment rate and poverty and looting public sectors through privatization measures and drain public financial resources through external debt.

This repressive judgment, like its predecessors, is a clear message to our people as a whole, and young men and women in particular, that: you can find repose in shantytowns with unemployment and poverty, and that you can die peacefully, but you must not rebel or protest, you must not dream of an economic, social and political system that emanates from an absolute popular sovereignty and is subject to it, a system that takes into consideration meeting of necessary needs of citizens and not the bourgeois profits of different nationalities.

Once again falls the mask of tyranny on front of popular struggles, despite the looting of country’s resources in the sea and land, through the cheaply sale of public institutions and acquisition of mining and fishing and quarries license and others, and despite the looting of public funds and institutions, and looting practiced by companies trough the delegated management of public services in sanitation, transport and distribution of water and electricity ( example what is going on in Casablanca), the riches’ justice did never react except to repress and imprison those who are criticizing those policies even with their songs as being with The rapper “EL HAKED”.

We, in the ATTAC Morocco, condemn the repression of freedoms and political trials that affect activists protest movement on the different sectors of their struggles and demands, announce to the national and international opinion the following :

• Our demand to release immediately all political prisoners and a halt to all prosecutions and prosecutions that affect our activists.
• Our Condemnation of the colonial policies of the European Union and the United States, which aims to drain the resources of our people using financial institutions and international trade. The repression and prisons are used to enforce the implementation of those policies.
• We call on all activists and all progressive movements to unite in a wide front in the struggle against the destructive policies of the remaining gains of the working classes and for an economic system serving all citizens and respecting the environment.
• Our demand that all forces struggling across the world to show their solidarity with political prisoners in Morocco.

Rabat, April 22, 2014

National Secretariat
ATTAC/CADTM Morocco