Authorities in Morocco are struggling to control social unrest across the country led by a new protest movement and driven by anger at deficient public services.
Demonstrations in a number of Moroccan cities this week have led to at least two deaths, hundreds of arrests and multiple injuries caused by clashes between police and protesters.
The prime mover behind the unrest has been “Gen Z212”, a movement which is demanding improved services such as healthcare and education and is angry at the country’s status as co-host, with Spain and Portugal, of the 2030 men’s football World Cup, which many see as a waste of public money.
Gen Z212’s name refers to the younger generation of Moroccans and the international phone prefix for their country.
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The protests, which have been taking place for several weeks, have intensified in recent days.
On Wednesday night, police shot at demonstrators in Lqliâa, near Agadir, on the Atlantic coast, killing two and injuring an unknown number of others.
According to police, armed protesters had attacked the police station and the shootings were in “legitimate self-defence”. A reported attack on another police station, in Marrakesh, in the centre of the country, was also repelled.
The interior ministry said measures were being taken to both ensure the safety of Moroccans and guarantee “individual and collective rights”. It reported that between Sunday and Tuesday 409 people were arrested, 263 police officers were injured and 142 police cars were burned or vandalised.
A pro-government news site reported that “some of these protests have seen a dangerous escalation, having threatened security and public order after the protests turned into violent mobs in which a group of people used knives, Molotov cocktails and threw stones”.
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However, Transparency Maroc, a charity that campaigns against corruption, said the authorities, “as is their habit, have resorted to repression, arrests and mock trials, instead of listening to and understanding the painful reality that ordinary people face in different public services which for years the powers-that-be have decided to carve up for the profit of the private sector”.
The Gen Z212 movement was created after eight pregnant women died in a hospital in Agadir in August, highlighting shortcomings in the healthcare system. Although the hospital’s director and the regional head of healthcare were replaced, activists started protesting peacefully and used the online platform Discord to lay out a range of demands. Many of these focused on healthcare, calling for the modernisation of hospitals and improved access to medication and treatment, as well as demands for improvements in the education system and measures to combat corruption and reduce youth unemployment, which is above 35 per cent.
On a website explaining its aims, Gen Z212 said it “has become the voice of a generation that feels forgotten by their leaders”.
On Tuesday, in an apparent effort to calm the unrest, the government issued a statement in which it expressed its “willingness to listen and understanding of the social grievances”.
On Wednesday, health minister Amine Tahraoui appeared before parliament, where he outlined government healthcare initiatives which he said aimed to meet expectations of “quality services that respect dignity and are accessible in all regions”. However, he also acknowledged that existing problems in the healthcare sector are “chronic and cumulative”.
Morocco did not see the kind of large social and political upheavals that neighbouring countries experienced during the 2011 Arab Spring. Instead, King Mohammed VI and the government promised a series of reforms which critics say were not delivered.
The last time Morocco saw comparable unrest was in 2016, after a fish seller was crushed to death in the back of a refuse vehicle, triggering months of protests and a severe clampdown by the authorities.
