Moroccans protest soaring food prices

2007-09-26

[File] A police team stands on the sidelines of the Sefrou protest

Protests continued in Morocco over high food prices on Tuesday (September 25th), two days after a sit-in degenerated into riots in the town of Sefrou, where protesters clashed with police and set fire to cars. The protests, the latest of which took place in Rabat, were organised by the Moroccan Association for Human Rights, which has called for more protests later this week.

The protests reportedly aimed to force the government to cancel a 30% increase in the price of bread. The price hike had been announced before Ramadan as a response to the rising cost of grain on the international market. Moroccan Interior minister Chakib Benmoussa called an emergency government meeting on Monday (September 24th), after which the price hike was annulled.

This content was commissioned for Magharebia.com.
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karim Posted 2007-09-27

Hello Magharebia, It is always a pleasure to read you. We are with you on the “bread crisis” going on throughout the world. Here, the price of bread has gone up 30 per cent and in France the price of a baguette has passed 1 Euro. That’s 6 Francs 50! 6 Francs 50 for a glass of water, a few grams of flour and a pinch of salt! The world’s speculators—the people who are rolling us in the dough and putting us in the oven!!!—have always had a big appetite. They are businessmen who have left us, provoking general famine, which I dare called organised, against the people of the world. What can Morocco possibly do? The sole solution would be to put the speculators before an international tribunal for “attempted genocide”, “conspiracy”, and “crimes against humanity”. This is what we know as the Human Rights of the Citizen; a convention that was ratified in the UN by the majority of countries in the world. So when are the leaders and the organizations going to dare to put their cases before the International Punitive Courts and sentence these mongers? That is the only solution.

champion Posted 2007-09-27

Have the hunger riots already started?

moha Posted 2007-09-29

People are starving to death in their home land .and many families in atlass mountains selling their land to the arab for the price of a carpet and push single mathers in to black market .Immigrant will be forced to send more money to their families because the euro is higher than USA dallars . is the only way to take advanage of the euro and get money from immigrants by force nothing else.and the poor pays the price ,and this governement did not care about the output of their programs .stupid arabs .

acharif moulay abdellah bouskraoui Posted 2007-10-03

I think that the government needs to take its work seriously. What is going on now is the government’s fault; it has not taken into consideration the thousands of poor people and the families who honestly need but just one piece of bread. In my opinion, all the responsibility falls on the government. Even more of a dishonour are the price-controls recently given by the Minister of the Interior: in short, where are they?... Do we need to have some riots to get them to do their jobs? This is shameful. I hope this next government will take its work seriously because this is all so disgraceful. Thank the Lord that while Moroccans have lost trust in the government and the political parties, they still have such great trust in His Majesty, Mohammed VI. It is he alone who thinks about the interests of the his people. We can only hope that the new government will do the same. Long Live the King! Down with the Profiteers of the People’s Suffering!

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