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
