Communicated : against the repression of small peasants and forest professionals

National Syndicate of Small Peasants and Forest Professionals

Communicated

Against the repression of small peasants, the exploitation of their collective lands and the denial of the right of their farmers' union to defend their rights before the authorities and the courts.

We have the honor to inform you that our National Syndicate of Small Peasants and Forest Professionals, affiliated to the Moroccan Labor Union, a trade union organization founded on June 23, 2012 by small farmers and forest professionals. We have accumulated significant experience in this area and we have dealt with several human rights files for this oppressed class in the rural, productive world, considered as one of the pillars of national production, essential to the food security of the people Moroccan. But he exposes to systematic persecution by successive Moroccan governments, which manifests itself in the theft of their lands and their collective and private forests. These inherited riches have been preserved for several centuries, French colonialism recognized them during the colonial era and exercised administrative restrictions which guaranteed their historic and natural rights. But the Moroccan government, through the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Agriculture, Waters and Forests, which since 2012 have established laws by effecting new divisions of dynastic groups and restrictions on new administrative decisions offices to through cadastral registration applications based on illegal documents to occupy the land collective and private of small peasants and forestry professionals, which has dispossessed them of millions of hectares, including dwellings, caves, cemeteries, roads, water sources and forests. Having become foreigners on their own land, the small peasants are prosecuted by the administrative authorities, the gendarmes, the water and forest agents and other authorities. Reduced to a refugee situation in their own country, they are only waiting for death.

The National Syndicate of Small Peasants and Forest Professionals has been subjected to repression by regional and local authorities since the assassination of one of its most eminent militants in the south, the martyr Brahim Saika, on April 15, 2016, and its activists are subject to legal proceedings and arrests, starting with two former political detainees: Zaid Takrayout, arrested because of his defense of the rights of Tamtatoucht peasants against the Toudra Tinghir dam, in Southeast, Said Oba Mimoun because of his defense of the rights of the peasants of Sidi Ayad in Midelt, also in the Southeast and Rahma Bouhajra because of his defense of the rights of the peasants of Ouled Ayade Beni Mellal. Small peasants are the subject of legal proceedings by the authorities and the land mafia, which resorts to false witnesses because of their defense of their right to land and the exploitation of forest wealth. Forest professionals, whom the Moroccan government calls nomads, are also persecuted by the abuses of the authorities and agents of Water and Forests.

We therefore write to you today on behalf of the National Syndicate of Small Peasants and Forest Professionals, after all our unsuccessful attempts to open a serious dialogue with the Moroccan Government represented by the Minister of the Interior and that of Agriculture and Waters and Forests on our file, which we had deposited in the wilaya of Rabat during our protest sit-in on December 28, 2017 in front of the parliament. The only response was the repression against our activists, the arrest of our activists Zayed Takrout and Said Oba Mimoun and Rahma Bouhajra, the non-respect of the right of our syndicate to the receipt of legal deposit after our congress of July 23, 2018 at the headquarters of the 'Moroccan Labor Union. For this refusal we sued the authorities before the Administrative Court of Casablanca.

To continue to abuse our rights, a second syndicate has been created by the National Federation of the Agricultural Sector within the Moroccan Labor Union, which is led by engineers and technicians and who do not allow the independence of syndicates that they founded at the head the National Syndicate of Agricultural Workers, this layer belonging to the community of small peasants and forestry professionals who were expropriated from the land and became Landless peasants are persecuted by the big landowners who have them looted and exploit them on their domains.

All these repressive practices against small peasants and forestry professionals and their syndicates aim to facilitate the exploitation of their lands and forests by large landowners supported by the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Agriculture and Water and Forests with the support of the political parties in government.

Thus, our syndicate produced a detailed request file, which it included in a book with the legal deposit number in the National Library Number: Legal Deposit: 2018MO0194 and ISBN: 978-9920-35-035-8, in order to protect themselves against attempts at liquidation on the part of the National Federation of the Agricultural Sector as it had done with the application files of the syndicates of agricultural workers, notably Sodia and Sogeta.

Having also presented you with the most important points of our file, we ask you to conduct an impartial investigation into it in order to protect the rights of small farmers and forest professionals and their unions.

Agadir January 14, 2020

The Secretary General

Lahoucine Amal