In May 2018, the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences at Ibn Zohr University of Agadir was the scene of serious violence, when clashes with stabbing opposed Saharawi students and members of the Amazigh cultural movement. A clash having caused the death of Abderrahim Badri, a third -year student of the Faculty of Legal, Economic and Social Sciences. Transferred to the emergency room of the Hassan II hospital in Agadir, the victim, born on February 15, 1993 in the commune of Asrir (province of Guelmime) and from the Azouafit tribe, did not survive.
But this is not the first time that two student factions have chosen the university enclosure to fight. The settling of scores, even with knives, have become a common currency. History even retains several cases that have marked Moroccan public opinion.
Disappearance of UNM, a prelude to incredible violence within universities?
In 2014, a Study on student violence said that universities that have existed UNM time know more acts of violence than recently built universities. Analysts and experts had then confirmed that “violence appeared after the dismantling of the National Union of Students of Morocco (UNEM)”. The National Council for Human Rights (CNDH) has also investigated the issue. The results of his study were presented on Wednesday June 25, 2014 in Rabat, as part of the 7th ordinary session of the Council. He had charged “the State and the activists of Annahj Addimocrati». “They are the first people responsible for violence in university campuses,” said the CNDH.
Created in 1956, the very first Student National Syndicate will be stored in August 1963 on the opposition side, already composed by the parties of the National Movement, including the National Union of Popular Forces (UNFP) and the Istiqlal party. The events will be crescendo, with the incendiary speech of the union against the regime of the late Hassan II then Tragic events of March 23, 1965.
The Faculty of Letters Dhar Mahraz de Fez. / PH. DR
It is also this year that will mark the grip of Marxist movements and currents on UNM’s authorities and the entire Moroccan student movement, placing the unions of advantages in the position of confrontations with the regime and the police. The most eloquent example is that of Events January 20, 1988 At the Dhar Mahraz university campus in Fez.
But it was from 1981 that the Historical Student Syndicate entered a final phase of decline. During this year, UNM will fail to organize its 17th congress. A particularly stormy event that will not lead to any decision. On the eve of the holding of this great mass, the Islamist groups in Moroccan universities had barely marked their entry into the game. The landscape will be made up of the various factions of the Moroccan left, including the USFP, the students of the PPS and the factions of the radical left.
It would therefore seem that the freezing of UNM’s activities and then the failure of its 17th congress left the different components of student unionism in confusion. In the absence of a framework allowing to unite the forces to defend together the interests of the Moroccan student or to democratically settle their differences, the student groups will continue to multiply, before the comparison of ideas is transformed into a war with white arms.
Islamists vs leftist …
It was around 1990 that the first violence between two student factions will burst in Morocco. “As is the case in the rest of the countries of North Africa, Islamic thought reached the maturity phase around the 1990s and therefore tried to create its student arms”, tells the noon post media. The latter recalls that with the appearance of an “Islamist player”, a major turning point will mark the clashes. It is in Fez that the first clashes between Islamists and leftists will take place, in 1990 before they became national, taking part in other universities such as Oujda, Marrakech, Meknes and Agadir.
Illustration photo. / DR
But undoubtedly, the most important event in these guaéguers between Islamists and leftists will take place in 1991 with the death of Mâati Boumli, continues the media.
“In 1991, the body of the Gauchist Mâati Boumli student will be discovered in Oujda. The arteries of his hands would have been cut, his uprooted and removed teeth and her body mutilated and vandalized to make her unrecognizable. Managers, students of the Islamist current from the Al Adl Wal Ihsane movement, will be arrested. 12 students of them will be sentenced to 20 years in prison. ”
Two years later, the new victim of the Islamists was none other than the leftist student Benaïssa Aït Ljid. He will be assassinated on March 1, 1993, to resume the version told in 2013 by Young Africa.
“On February 25, 1993, around 4 pm, Mohamed Aït Ljid Benaïssa left Fès’ college, where he was registered in the fourth year (…) It is the month of Ramadan, Mohamed and a comrade take a little taxi to return home. On the way, about fifteen individuals peel the windshield of the car and force the driver to stop. The “bearded”, according to witnesses, are only interested in the two passengers. “
Aït Ljid and his friend are then beaten up by the group of Islamist students and left for dead. Speed up in critical condition, Aït Ljid arrives at the unconscious hospital. He will stay in a coma until the day of his death when his family always claims the condemnation of one of the students who would have participated in his assassination : The PJDist advisor and president of the NGO Forum Al Karama, Abdelali Hamieddine.
… Then Sahraouis vs amazighs
The violence will continue within Moroccan universities, in particular with the appearance of an Amazigh faction. An arrival which will be marked in particular by the assassination, on May 12, 2007, of Abderrahman El Hasnaoui, in Errachidia by students belonging to the Amazigh current. On May 22 of the same year, barely ten days after the death of this bassist student, another will be murdered in Meknes. That day, Mohamed Taher Sassioui will be “beaten up by a band made up of 8 people and equipped with machetes and knives”, tells Annahj’s blog Addemocrati al qaâidi.
On April 24, 2013, another young student will succumb to a deadly injury following a violent intervention by the police to end a rally of students from the University City Fès-Saïs. A matter known in particular for Lahcen Daoudi’s moved gesturethen Minister of teaching when a journalist challenges him on the death of this young student. This is also the example of the involvement, sometimes direct, sometimes indirect, of the State in the violence which rages within Moroccan universities.
Abdelilah Benkirane, then head of government, at the funeral of Abderrahim Hasnaoui. / PH. DR
A year later, on April 24, 2014, the death of Abderrahim Hasnaoui, a student in Fez and from Errachidia and member of Attollabi Attollabi (organization of the student renewal), close to the PJD, will make the front page of the newspapers thanks to the mobilization of the ruling party and its secretary general, Abdelilah Benkirane. Hasnaoui, who did not share with Abderrahman El Hasnaoui that a family name and the city of origin, will die from his injuries inflicted by stabbing assault. Students belonging to the Baassist Clan of the Democratic Way will then be sentenced: six months for two students, 3 years in prison for two other and 15 years in prison for 7 students, directly involved in the assault.
Confrontations within the Moroccan University no longer concerns only Islamists and leftists. Proof of this is the assassination, on January 23, 2016, of Omar Khaleq alias Izem, a student of the Amazigh current at Cadi Ayyad University in Marrakech.
Omar Khaleq alias Izem. / PH. DR
He was one of the five students violently assaulted that day by students belonging to the Sahrawi current. 18 students were found guilty of these tragic events. Four of them had received 10 years in prison for voluntary homicide with premeditation, while the fourteen others were found guilty of complicity and incentive to hatred, each sentenced to three years in prison.
The assault of the Sahrawi student Abderrahim Badri would therefore be a revenge of the Amazigh clan. Settlements that are not ready to disappear …
