al-Arabiya: Young activists campaigning for greater democracy in Morocco are using the social network Facebook to call for new demonstrations “for dignity and large scale political reforms” on March 20.
“We have chosen this date to demonstrate peacefully, for dignity and to demand deep political reforms,” Oussama El Khlifi, one of those behind the “February 20 movement”, told AFP.
Demonstrations took place in several Moroccan cities on February 20 in answer to a call by young people via Facebook to demand “urgent” political reforms and limits to the king’s powers.
“Several associations, political parties and trade unions are backing our movement, which is peaceful and in particular is claiming the promulgation of a new constitution,” Oussama El Khlifi said.
The February 20 movement claims on its Facebook page to have 30,000 followers and gained recent backing from one of the major parties in the government coalition, the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP).
After the February 20 demonstrations, the first in Morocco since the tide of unrest swept through the Arab world, the authorities said they had “got the message.
The following day King Mohammed VI said he wanted to “strengthen (the Moroccan model) by new reforms.”
we have been observing the tide sweeping thru different arab countries and we most certainly support arab people in all that they are demanding since it is their right to do so.
In morocco, we hope that authorities will cleverly avoid any counter assaults against the people who have demontrated and will keep demontrating peacefuly.We hope moroccan authorities will understand and get the message in a more civilised way avoiding the fatal mistakes made by other arab countries which have used oppression and perpetrated a lot of violence against civilians but in vain ! They simply did not survive though.
terms like ,moderate countries, turn out to be mendacious and misleading giving the US justifications to keep brutal despots ruling their people in complete impunity…all this now is over or almost over…no war on terror is to be accepted any more…The US,and the west in general, is now left naked …They all have to accept the peoples WILL and demand for change and liberties…otherwise they will have to face an inevitable TSUNAMI
I totally agree, there’s nothing moderate about say, Saudi Arabia, but the western press love to call that state moderate simply bc it is in cahoots w the US.