Citizens Declaration PRESS RELEASE - Urgent JOURNALIST ALI LMRABET’S HUNGER STRIKE

We will not allow Ali Lmrabet to die as a result of the hunger strike he began June 24, 2015

We are calling for a protest to show our solidarity with Ali through a symbolic hunger strike by those who are able to do so.

Where: Place des Nations in front of the United Nations in Geneva

When: This Saturday, July 25th, 2015 at 14:30

By our citizen-gathering this Saturday, July 25, 2015 in Geneva, we want to call world attention to the fact that the Moroccan journalist Ali Lmrabet, whose intellectual honesty, courage, and determination is known by all, may perish if his hunger strike continues.

Through this hunger strike, which will have lasted for one month (24 June - 25 July 2015), Ali Lmrabet has been protesting against having been deprived of his rights as a Moroccan citizen. In point of fact, the Rabat authorities have not only arbitrarily refused to provide him with proof of residence or the renewal of his passport, but also any official permission which would allow him to relaunch his newspapers and to freely exercise his profession as a journalist in Morocco.

Having been illegally sentenced in 2005 to imprisonment without parole, and prohibited him from writing article in the Moroccan press for a period of 10 years, Ali, when he reached the end of this never-before pronounced sentence (April 2015), decided to fight relentlessly to wage war with his pen.

During the 29th session of the Council of Human Rights in Geneva, in which he participated as a guest beginning on June 23, he forcefully denounced the Moroccan government’s recourse to this completely unacceptable act of

refusing to grant him his official documents in order to disguise their refusal to allow him to begin publishing his newspapers again; Ali could only fall back on the single dramatic alternative of a hunger strike.

To date, the Geneva authorities have protested these events directly to the Moroccan King himself, they advised the Federal Council on the Ali’s unacceptable and unwarranted punishment, they addressed the Ambassador representing the Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of Morocco to the UN in Geneva, but these efforts were all in vain.

An international media campaign reported on these protests, which are also those of thousands of citizens around the world. The Moroccan authorities have not budged and persist in denying the rights of journalist Ali Lmrabet

By our gathering on July 25 and our symbolic hunger strike with Ali, we hope to persuade the Moroccan government through rational discourse and oblige it to immediately return to Ali Lmrabet, a father of two, all his identification documents which will allow him to return to his country and thus prevent a fatal outcome to his hunger strike.

We are grateful for your solidarity and hope as many of you as possible will be present this July 25, 2015 in Geneva.

For the Organizing Committee

Profesor. Ahmed Benani

Geneva, 17 July 2015