Human Rights Pioneer, Mama Assia, Mourned

SAID TEMSAMANI

12/23/12

Morocco News Board - - - On Friday, November 2, 2012, Assia El Ouadie Known as Mama Assia passed away. A date that the Moroccan and human rights activists will remember for a long time.  They will commemorate the life of this exceptional Moroccan lady who devoted her life to fight injustice and to stand along victims of human rights.  On her deathbed, members of her family and close friends heard her saying in tears : "Oh if God gives me the opportunity to live a year or two, just to serve my children and all victims of social injustice. I have not yet finished the job. "

It was young prisoners in a Moroccan juvenile delinquency center that gave her the name "Mama Assia." Her personality was unique, marked by both generosity towards the weakest, the excluded, the marginalized, the abused and a rare wisdom displayed towards the powerful.

She was on a permanent contact with human rights activists and women victims of violence. In the 70s when she was a judge, she committed herself to the defense of juvenile delinquents who were in custody and as a lawyer she never hesitated to defend political prisoners and missing persons and their families, especially during the years of repression under the late king Hassan II. She put all her energy in the creation of the "Observatory of Prisons". Later, she returned to the bench and spent the rest of her life defending women and detained minors.

Within a decade, Assia has shed light on the prison world. This institution, which is scary, disturbing, which does not interest many people. Mama Assia lifted the veil on what affects humans in a context of poverty, delinquency, psychopathology.

She always tried to shape what is emotionally unbearable. She Created the levers of a collective reaction around her cause, she attracted the attention and affection of the people from all levers of the state.

Mama Assia, "The Moroccan Mother Theresa", has built her work on love, altruism, compassion and determination. She found support in current King Mohammed VI.  A foundation has been created "the Mohammed VI Foundation for the reintegration of young offenders" to mobilize the skills and provide the funds to put up a new approach to prisons.

Mama Assia's words were always : "prison is a humiliation, a space where prevailing confinement, marginality, and exclusion, put a name to human suffering, to make visible the evils of the prison, propose actions, a new approach that emphasizes the integration of young children and their social environment." This program was Mama Assia.

A challenge in a society as a whole. Assia has by her intelligence, fight, her determination to upset the establishment. Moroccans respected her because she was a woman courage. Never in modern history of the country, a disappearance has affected so many lives.

At her funeral, the whole Morocco was represented : officials, politicians, civil society, human rights activists, economic actors, families of generations of former political prisoners. At her funeral Royal Advisors marched alongside former youth juvenile inmates of the prison Oukacha.

Mama Assia will remain the warrior against human misery, injustice and indifference.

Said Temsamani is a  political observer and consultant, who follows events in Morocco and across North Africa. 

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Comments (1)  

 

+1 #1 RE: Human Rights Pioneer, Mama Assia, Mourned — Ahmed Daoudi 2012-12-23 14:08

The author was doing fine until he showed his true colors. The article is not to praise the defunct, it sounds more like a tribute to his king. How about saying that the king has jailed most of the F20 leaders without any just cause? isn't this the definition of human rights?

The author writes day and night and everywhere how good is the king and how the makhzen is so good for the west and the US in particular. You are fooling no one but yourself dude.

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