Fatna El Bouih

"After my release in 1982, I only really started to speak and become active again in 1991. I became a member of the coordinating council for all the then-existing women’s groups (al-Majlis al-Watani lil-Tansiq). We combined forces to change the mudawana (the code of laws governing family and women’s status), laws that obviously handicap women. If we could change the law, we felt we could change anything. I began with the Union d’Action Feminine (UAF) campaign to collect a million signatures. I knew UAF president Latifa Jbabdi from the “March 23” organization, then again we were together in Derb Moulay Cherif for seven months, followed by the prisons of Ghbila and Meknes for three years from 1977-80. I was among those women who put together documents and texts presented to King Hassan II in 1992. Some changes were effected in 1993. Since that collaborative experience, I learned that women have to struggle to make changes but equally we have to alleviate, or ease women’s social and cultural burdens."

"As a former political prisoner, I feel this enormous psychological relief and unburdening since the death of King Hassan II and note the changes in me and in Morocco. It is only during this “new era” (‘ahd jadid) that I became really active. Before I just wrote, now I feel useful. For example, my husband and I are among the founding members of the Moroccan Observatory of Prisons (OMP) officially organized November 13, 1999. I experienced prison, I wanted to help other prisoners, and I found a way to do so through the NGO movement. We write reports, visit prisons, and last Ramadan, we organized festivities first in the women’s and then in the men’s sections of Oukacha Penitentiary. We are working to establish programs to help prisoners reintegrate into society by paying attention to their individual familial and social contexts, and we work to change laws concerning current prison sentencing practices. The prison authorities have been receptive."

"I started my activism in new structures that emerged and really started to grow…when there was the prospect of a new era, the possibility for change."

"There was an amnesty in favour of political prisoners, some detention centres and torture facilities were closed down, and new structures for human rights were created."

"There was this whole human rights movement that emerged, which was the direct result of the struggle of activists who were behind bars and never stopped their struggle"

"It’s a never-ending struggle to preserve these gains, because the ‘enemy’—dictatorship—is always just waiting around the corner, ready at any point to sabotage all your gains. So it’s important to remain vigilant…to protect and preserve the rights that were fought for and achieved."

"I say to myself that I can forgive those who tortured me, those who detained me, those who perpetrated hideous crimes against me. I can even forgive the state. But I want to guarantee that my daughters won’t experience the same fate as me."