The C.R.I.M.E. Report

ISSUE #78 CONTENTS:


SPOTLIGHT CASES:

Winners of 5th Annual Dream Deferred Essay Contest Announced

With outstanding entries from Iran, Yemen, Morocco, and the U.S., HAMSA’s fifth annual “Dream Deferred Essay Contest on Civil Rights in the Middle East” challenged young thinkers to take on civil rights repression, formulate creative solutions, and brainstorm how to contribute to grassroots reform. From hundreds of entries, a panel of celebrity judges selected winners of $10,000 in prizes.

Winning essays included imaginative ideas for solidarity campaigns, including young Americans challenging Saudi diplomats to help secure the women’s right to drive as well as a proposed series of hunger strikes linked to video festivals organized by American students. Other essays featured first-person confessionals by young Middle Easterners, including a provocative account of an Egyptian Baha’i who changes her identity to a Muslim man in an attempt to escape repression as well as Sunnis in Iran facing governmental religious persecution.

Winning essays offer a dynamic mix of appalling personal stories of repression, inspiring vignettes of small breakthroughs, specific plans for advocacy campaigns, and persuasive calls to action in the face of apathy. Look for WANTED profiles of winners in upcoming issues of The CRIME Report. Congratulations to all the winners, including 50 more writers who won book awards!



International Protests Bring Saeed’s Torturers to Justice

When Khaled Saeed was found dead outside a cybercafe, police claimed he choked while swallowing a drug packet - but his heavily bruised body suggested otherwise. Several weeks of protests in the streets of Cairo, London, and Washington as well as on Facebook have at last borne fruit: two police officers have now been charged with beating the victim, abuse of the power, and arrest without justification.

On June 6, Alexandria police officers Mahmoud Salah Mahmoud and Awad Ismail Suleiman brought Saeed’s bruised body to an ambulance. When questioned later by prosecutors about the condition of Saeed’s body, the officers claimed that injuries were caused when he fell from the ambulance stretcher and from the crowd of people that hit him in attempts to revive him. But Saeed’s friends claim he had recorded video footage of the policemen partaking in a drug deal and was beaten to death to prevent its release.

For weeks, prosecutors took no action against the officers, despite peaceful protests in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria that were shut down by security forces. But then the protests spread abroad as Saeed’s death became an international story. Protesters gathered in London and outside the Egyptian embassy in Washington, calling for justice, as one protester Ossama Roushdi explained: “We want the Egyptian people. . .to know that we stand by their side.” A rap video was even made to express the outrage that such a murder could take place.The outside pressure has now yielded a small victory: the police officers are at last facing prosecution, though not specifically for murder. What happens after the arrest of the policemen remains to be seen, but the initial breakthrough illustrates the power of international solidarity.



WANTED to “Wake Up” Moroccans: Mohamed “MoMo” Merhari

On the February 16th 2003, 14 men, from 21 to 35 years old were arrested for “Satanism” based on their music collections and heavy metal t-shirts. 38-year-old theatre technician Mohamed “MoMo” Merahari personally knew the 14 music fans and decided that it was time to wake up his country to the importance of individual expression through music. He created Nayda (“wake up” in Moroccan), a growing alternative cultural movement, and organized L’Boulevard, a four day free music festival that is now the biggest urban music festival in Africa and even received a donation from the King himself. MoMo spoke to The CRIME Report about his quest to roll back civil rights restrictions on music.


How would you describe the Nayda movement in Morocco?
We compare the Moroccan Nayda to the Spanish Movida, the counter-cultural movement that took place after Francisco Franco's death in 1975. During the 1990s, I used to help run theater classes and plays but then began organizing concerts for new talent: rap, rock, metal and fusion artists who had no venue to perform in. Thus L'Boulevard and the Nayda movement was born. It really began to gather support after the 2002 Islamist political party’s electoral successes and the 2003 bomb attacks in Casablanca. The events embody Moroccan youths’ desire to frankly express themselves and to address challenges in their country. Many rappers, for instance, testified about the harsh living conditions, especially in impoverished neighborhoods, and expressed their political disillusionment. These rappers are a reminder that Nayda was not created by the upper class and its so-called westernized culture (as the Islamists accuse us), but that its roots lie in the modest part of society. My regret, though, is that unlike in the Spanish Movida, most Moroccan intellectuals have not stepped up to support our work. We need intellectual support to grow the alternative arts scene, but reporters seem to care more about critiquing the clothes worn by singers than the impact of our movement.


What kind of obstacles did you face in organizing the festival?
Ask instead what kind of obstacles we didn’t face! Financial, administrative, political, structural - you name it, we faced it!  For several years our association did not even have an office. Imagine what a nightmare it was to organize something as elaborate and big as the festival without an office. Money has always been an issue, and we have unusual expenses. For instance, we have to pay for our own security service (fences included) rather than having police provided by the municipality. Finally, every year we have to face hostile Islamists who lobby authorities to ban the festival. Every year it’s a real arm wrestle, and every year we have to organize everything without an official permit - which only arrives 2 days before the festival starts!

What is the future of the Nayda movement?
In 2009, the association received nearly $250,000 from King Mohammed VI. With this donation, we fixed up our office and transformed it into a state-of-the-art recording and rehearsal studio. We also want to run a professional training workshop on careers in the performing arts. Since 1999, new aspects have been added to the initial festival. For instance, we run a competition for local musicians and the finalists get to perform at the Tremplin Festival, which takes place in the old slaughterhouses of Casablanca, alongside international music acts. But Nayda is marked by this paradox: it has given the Moroccan youth a way to express and free itself from the traditional musical stranglehold, but it has also exposed the dramatic lack of cultural space in Morocco. We need a national infrastructure to support alternative artists, beyond festivals once a year.

 

QUIZ: Which Gulf state is importing citizens?

ANSWER: Bahrain. Obtaining citizenship in most Middle Eastern countries is a difficult and sometimes impossible task. Yet the Bahraini regime, ruled by minority Sunnis, has begun a new program to grant passports to Saudis to alter the demographic balance for political ends. But some Bahrainis are not sitting by quietly as citizenship gets handed out to the select few who meet the regime’s needs. On July 14, protestors marched from Bahrain Mall to Dana Mall to demand equal application of citizenship laws and an end to sectarian selectivity for naturalization. A video and Facebook group have also been a part of this protest against political naturalization in Bahrain.


BECOME A PARTNER IN CRIME:
Here are quick ways to contribute to the Middle East civil rights movement: