Morocco: Overturn Verdicts for Homosexual Conduct

Convictions Violate Right to Privacy (New York, December 12, 2007) – The criminal verdicts in Morocco against six men sentenced to prison for homosexual conduct should be set aside and the men released, Human Rights Watch said today.

The court of first instance in Ksar el-Kbir, a small city about 120 kilometers south of Tangiers, convicted the men on December 10 of violating article 489 of Morocco’s penal code, which criminalizes “lewd or unnatural acts with an individual of the same sex.” According to lawyers for the defendants, the prosecution failed to present any evidence that the men actually had engaged in the prohibited conduct in the first place. “These men are behind bars for private acts between consenting adults that no government has any business criminalizing in the first place,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The men’s rights to privacy and freedom of expression have been violated, and the court has convicted them without apparent evidence; they should be set free.” The men have been in jail since they were first arrested by the police between November 23 and 25, 2007, after a video circulated online – including on YouTube – purporting to show a private party, allegedly including the men, taking place in Ksar el-Kbir on November 18. Press reports claimed the party was a “gay marriage.” Following the arrests, hundreds of men and women marched through the streets of Ksar el-Kbir, denouncing the men’s alleged actions and calling for their punishment. Abdelaziz Nouaydi, a Rabat lawyer on the men’s defense team, said that the judge convicted the men even though the prosecution presented no evidence showing that an act violating Article 489 had occurred and offered only the video as evidence. The video showed no indications of sexual activity. The men all pleaded innocent to offenses under the article, which has a statute of limitation of five years. At the trial, the judge refused to release the men provisionally pending their appeals. Criminalizing consensual, adult homosexual conduct violates human rights protection in international law. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Morocco has ratified, bars interference with the right to privacy. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has condemned laws against consensual homosexual conduct as violations of the ICCPR. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has held that arrests for consensual homosexual conduct are, by definition, human rights violations. In the preamble to its constitution, Morocco “subscribes to the principles, rights, and obligations” consequent on its membership in organizations including the United Nations “and reaffirms its attachment to human rights as they are universally recognized.” The court sentenced three defendants to six months in prison and two defendants to four months; it sentenced the sixth, who it also convicted of the unauthorized sale of alcohol, to 10 months. The defendants range in age from 20 to 61 years old. In a private letter to Moroccan Justice Minister Abdelwahed Radi before the trial, Human Rights Watch urged the government to drop the charges and release the men. The letter also urged authorities to ensure the men’s physical safety, in light of the large and menacing mass demonstrations that took place against them. “In applying an unjust law in an unjust fashion, the Ksar el-Kbir court has fueled the forces of intolerance in Morocco,” said Whitson. “If Morocco truly aspires to be a regional leader on human rights, it should lead the way in decriminalizing homosexual conduct.” Article 489 of the Moroccan Penal Code punishes homosexual conduct with sentences between six months and three years in prison and fines of 120 to 1,200 dirhams (US $15 to $150).

Development threatens Morocco's wild shoreline

By Tom Pfeiffer
SAIDIA, Morocco (Reuters) - Ecologists say a tragedy is unfolding in north Africa where construction firms are moving in on some of the last unspoilt stretches of Mediterranean coastline in the search for profits.
With Spain trying to preserve what remains undeveloped on its built-up shoreline, Morocco has stepped forward as a willing host for large-scale tourism development as it seeks to narrow the north-south wealth divide and lift millions out of poverty.
The cost, say environment campaigners, will be irreparable damage to the Mediterranean's wilder southern shores where urban and industrial expansion, rampant pollution and illegal sand extraction are already taking their toll.
Morocco wants to attract millions of extra tourists to a chain of seaside resorts being built by Spanish, Belgian and Dutch consortia and U.S. groups Kerzner and Colony Capital.
The first is under way in Saidia on Morocco's eastern edge, where Spain's Fadesa is turning a low-lying area of forests and dunes into 7 million square meters of shops, golf courses, hotels with 17,000 beds and 3,100 villas and flats.
On its British Web site, Fadesa promises "landscaped parks and green areas, as well as pleasant public spaces, (will) harmonize with the beautiful natural surroundings."
At the development last month, machines lumbered over a landscape of earthworks, workers' shacks and the tattered remains of what campaigners say was Morocco's only juniper forest.
"We call them the destroyers," said local environment campaigner Najib Bachiri. "They dug up 6 km of dunes and killed thousands of tortoises just so you can see the sea from the corniche."
In a statement, Fadesa said it had "put in place measures for the protection, recuperation and regeneration of the environment beyond what was demanded by Moroccan law."
BEACHES RETREATING
Seven out of 47 of Morocco's Mediterranean beaches have disappeared in recent years, the European Environment Agency (EEA) said in a report last year. In Algeria, of between 250 and 300 km (160 and 190 miles) of sandy beaches, 85 percent were retreating and losing sand.
In valleys throughout the Maghreb, new dams for irrigation are trapping sediment that once washed down to coastal areas to bolster important wildlife habitats.
Wildlife groups said Fadesa was given carte blanche to destroy the dunes that protected Saidia's hinterland from the sea and flatten all but a small patch of forest.
"They could at least have left some of the trees for the golf courses, but even they were uprooted," said Mohamed Benata, head of regional development association ESCO.
Fadesa has said the Saidia project will create 8,000 direct jobs and more than 40,000 indirectly in a poor region cut off since 1994 when Algeria closed its land border with Morocco.
Tourism Ministry officials said they wanted each new resort to make use of the local environment to attract higher-spending visitors, adding that they had enforced the most widely used international standards for preserving the natural habitat.
Some observers say Morocco made a mistake in allowing Fadesa to build close to the Moulouya wetland, the country's most important reserve for more than 200 species of birds, and fear the worst, given plans for up to a million visitors every year.
"It's too close to the mouth of the river which has the richest ecosystem," said Alaoui El Kebir of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) in Rabat.
Saidia's unique habitat drew life from water seeping through the sand and collecting in marshy areas. Fadesa has built channels and barriers to drain water away from the buildings.
"Fadesa say the work will dry about 5 percent of the wetland but our calculations show it'll be more like half," said Benata.
MIGRATING BIRDS
Without the wetland, a vital stepping stone for hundreds of millions of migrating birds would be removed.
The EEA says several north African wetlands are threatened, including Lake Bizerta in Tunisia, the salt lake of Regahaia in Algeria and 23rd of July Lake in Libya.
Bachiri accuses Fadesa of flouting local laws by pumping water from the Moulouya river. Lorries could be seen last month on the river bank loading up with salty water then returning to the work site.
A spokesman for Fadesa said the company had presented an environmental impact study when tendering for the project, which the Moroccan government had accepted, and had implemented steps to protect and improve the environment beyond that required by Moroccan law.
ESCO's Benata said mega-projects such as Saidia were out of fashion in Europe -- Spain had begun copying a strategy pioneered on the French Riviera to reclaim land, demolish buildings and regenerate the ecosystem.
Once the Saidia development is complete, Fadesa is likely to sell the site to management companies. Years down the line, however, nature may regain control.
"We produced a flooding scenario which shows most of the Fadesa complex could be under water by 2050 as global warming raises sea levels," said Maria Snoussi, earth sciences professor at Mohamed V University in Rabat.
(Additional reporting by Sarah Morris in Madrid; editing by Sara Ledwith and Andrew Dobbie)
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