Mohamed VI has exercised to full hands from Tetuán (where he spends his vacation in the north of the country) the privilege of real forgiveness on Tuesday before a message to the nation in which he has also warned about the growing inequality between the territories of the Maghreb Nation and the economic gap between the thriving urban coastal regions and the backward rural interior. In which the 26th anniversary of his arrival to power commemorates this Wednesday, King Mohammed VI has pardoned 19,673 condemned, a figure with few precedents within the real grace measures usually dictated to decongest the overcrowded Moroccan prisons in the official and religious festivities.
In addition to an ordinary batch of 2,415 convicted, some prisoners and others in freedom, the monarch has also exceptionally forgiven another 17,258 inmates “selected according to specific criteria to convert this operation into a humanitarian initiative,” according to a statement from the Ministry of Justice. Among the pardons are 115 sentenced to life imprisonment who have seen their penalty for a certain temporal seclusion and 23 death sentenced to death (although in Morocco the capital penalty has not been de facto for more than three decades) that have seen their sentence commuted by the prison to perpetuity.
The Arab NGO that defends the application of a right process to the detainees, has requested a “general general pardon for all political detainees” in Morocco on the occasion of the celebration of the throne party. In an international memorandum addressed to the Ministerial Delegate for Human Rights in Rabat cited by the Bladi.net portal, the Adalá Center considers that the anniversary of the arrival of the throne of Mohamed VI constitutes an important time to evaluate the advances achieved in the field of rights and freedoms, including freedom of the press and expression.
“These advances remain limited, in a context where concrete challenges persist that hinder freedom of the press and opinion, especially marked by the continuous restrictions on journalists through judicial procedures and political and economic pressures,” says the Panárabe Humanitarian NGO.
In a gesture with which he tried to reconcile with the favorable climate to the freedom of expression with which he began his reign, in 1999, Mohamed VI pardoned last year at the throne festival to the main ones in an “statement of Moroccan sovereignty, and an act of clemency that did not obey any foreign pressure,” as an official statement said then. International NGOs for the Defense of Human Rights include among those arrested for crimes of opinion and nationalist actions to activists convicted of the social protests of the RIF in 2016 and 2017 and in the Saharawi camp in 2010.
Social Justice and Inequality
Mohammed VI has urged his speech to avoid an economic territorial rupture and combat inequalities. The king said there is no place for a “two -speed” Morocco, and that public policies must contribute to improving the situation of citizens throughout the territory. The sovereign has thus urged the government to develop “inclusive public policies”, in which it includes the employment and improvement of social services, health and education. Mohamed VI has also appealed to improve the management of water resources after a long period of drought.
The Sovereign Alauí has highlighted in his speech that Morocco has already exceeded the threshold of the UN Human Development Index, but admits that “unfortunately, there are still certain areas, especially from the rural world, which accuse poverty and precariousness due to lack of infrastructure and basic services.”
Before the broadcast of the speech, King Mohammed VI received the annual report of the Bank to Maghreb, Abdelatif Juahri in the Royal Palace of Tetuán. The head of the Central Bank of Morocco stressed that the national economy grew 3.8% in 2024, the year in which only 82,000 jobs were created, with an annual upward unemployment rate of 13.3%.
With serious gesture in the face of the commemoration of his arrival to power in 1999, the monarch of the Alauí dynasty has reappeared in public for the first time after having presided over June 7 the religious ceremonies of the EID El Adha or Fiesta del Cordero, also in Tetuán the capital of the former Spanish protectorate in northern Morocco. He has limited himself to reading carefully
After showing a certain deterioration of his state of health last October during the visit to Rabat of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, whom he received supported by a cane, the 61 -year -old Moroccan sovereign, suffered an accident in December that caused him with an immobilization of the shoulder and left arm for about two months, and kept him away from the acts with a multitude presence until he returned to the public scene At the end of April to launch the works of the new high -speed train.
One more year, the king, a country who broke relations with Morocco in 2021, and urged “of the growing international support for the autonomy initiative [de Rabat] For the Sahara. ”Mohamed VI especially thanked the recent approach of the United Kingdom and Portugal to the Moroccan thesis, in the face of the proposal for self -determination and independence defended by the Polisario Front, backed by the Government of Algiers, for the former Spanish colony.
