Historian and human rights activist Maati Monjib announced this week that he has started a 48-hour hunger strike from Wednesday to Friday at his home in Temara. On his Facebook page, he indicated that he would be accompanied at all times by “relatives and human rights defenders”.
Maâti Monjib explained the decision to go on a hunger strike to protest against the ban on traveling to Spain and participating in cultural activities in the Mediterranean region. “This is an attack on my freedom of movement is a flagrant violation of the law. The closure of borders may in no case exceed one year (Code of Criminal Procedure, chapter 160 and following). Indeed, I have been arbitrarily banned from traveling for two years, by the public prosecutor and then by the investigating judge, ”he denounces.
The historian and human rights activist added that he is undergoing “an attempt at enslavement”. “While my bank account is frozen (meaning I can’t use it) and my assets are frozen, I learned when I returned to work at university on September 1 last year, that the government administration at the highest level had decided to deprive me of it”, he explains again. A measure he describes as “illegal”, pointing to non-compliance with procedures.
Maâti Monjib threatened to resort to “international procedures” after the exhaustion of national procedures and expressed his “condemnation of this pressure and this persecution” which he has suffered “for years despite [his] state of health”.
In October 2021, the historian and human rights activist went on a hunger strike to protest against his “ban” on leaving Morocco and receiving treatment in France. The king’s prosecutor at the Rabat court of first instance reacted later, saying that his statements were “contrary to reality and completely far from the truth”, recalling that Maâti Monjib “is the subject of a procedure relating money laundering investigated by the investigating judge” and referring to the decision of the investigating judge against him.
