By Souhail Karam
RABAT (Reuters) – About 70 jobless Moroccans threatened to commit “collective suicide” on Friday by trying to march into phosphate quarries riddled with explosives unless they were employed by state phosphate monopoly OCP, local officials said.
Police forcefully intervened to break up the protest near the southern city of Benguerir and arrested six on suspicion of instigating it, the officials said. No further details were immediately available.
The incident was the latest in a series of eye-catching protests. On Wednesday, four unemployed graduates set fire to themselves with petrol in the heart of the capital Rabat, echoing the act of the Tunisian vegetable vendor who one year ago set off the “Arab Spring” revolts.
The graduates suffered burns but survived the incident during a protest to press authorities to give them and fellow graduates public sector jobs, Moroccan media said.
On Friday, a court in the city of Safi, on the Atlantic coast, sentenced 10 people to four years in jail and hefty fines for arson of public property and attacking the police during riots over unemployment there in August.
Among the 10 was a local activist, Abdeljalil Akadil, whom the country’s main human rights group AMDH say had been tortured for three days after his arrest to force him to admit to involvement in the riots. The court sentenced six other people to four months’ imprisonment for involvement in the riots.
POVERTY
Safi and Benguerir are in a region that has Morocco’s second lowest GDP per capita, the highest poverty ratio and the widest income disparities, according to official data.
King Mohammed, the biggest private stakeholder in the $100 billion economy, reacted swiftly when hundreds of thousands held protests last year calling for a UK or Spanish-style monarchy, independent judiciary and curbs on corruption.
He conceded some powers to elected officials and brought forward by almost a year an election which the moderate Islamists of the Justice and Development Party (PJD) won in November.
In the southeastern village of Imider, home to Morocco’s biggest silver mines, hundreds of residents have for over two months been staging sit-ins to protest against dwindling water aquifers, which they accuse a mining firm of over-exploiting.
Almost a third of Moroccan youths are unemployed, poverty affects over a quarter of the 33 million population and there are persistent grievances about inefficient education, nepotism and widespread corruption.
“People are trying to draw the attention of those in charge to their plight. They don’t feel equal before justice or in terms of access to whatever opportunities are available,” said Khadija Ryadi, who heads AMDH.
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