In his recent post, Rachid El Belghiti offers a deeply human and critical reading of Morocco’s judicial response to youth protests, based on the figures presented by Judge Hassan Farhan. According to El Belghiti, these figures are not merely cold judicial data; they are a mirror reflecting a simmering social reality and a symptom of a broken trust between the state and its young citizens.
His analysis invites readers to go beyond numbers and consider the human pain that authority chooses to judge rather than understand.
El Belghiti and the Language of Numbers
El Belghiti cites Judge Farhan’s report: approximately 5,780 people were arrested during the protests, with 3,300 released after security screening, while 2,480 were referred to the judiciary, including 1,473 in pretrial detention.He interprets these figures as revealing a tension between apparent order and underlying disorder.
El Belghiti asks: was justice here truly an expression of the rule of law, or a reminder to youth of the boundaries of voice and presence? He emphasizes that the release of more than half of the detainees highlights the arbitrariness of mass arrests and reactive security measures, rather than systematic institutional management.Thus, in El Belghiti’s view, the judiciary becomes a secondary stage in a pre-existing crisis, rather than a preventive or corrective force.
From Protest to Criminalization: When Pain Is Judged
El Belghiti stresses the human face of the crowds missing from official statements.
Youth did not take to the streets to create chaos; they were seeking recognition and meaning.
He illustrates this with the example of young agricultural workers who export tomatoes to Helsinki but cannot afford even a box locally—a stark symbol of economic injustice fueling social anger.
He raises a core question:
Were the trials a moment of justice, or a sign of a state unable to comprehend the pain of its children?
For El Belghiti, the trials represent, above all, the prosecution of collective disappointment, rather than the prosecution of crime.
Moroccan Generation Z Through El Belghiti’s Lens
El Belghiti notes that over 160 minors were among those arrested, representing a digitally connected but socially constrained generation.
They see the world through their screens but encounter walls of unemployment, exclusion, and closed opportunities.
He highlights the contradiction: a generation educated in freedom online, punished when it expresses it in reality.
This demonstrates a cultural and political gap between a 20th-century state and a 21st-century youth.
Justice Between Deterrence and Reform
El Belghiti underscores that with conviction rates approaching 90%, one must ask whether the system is about rehabilitative justice or social control.
He contrasts the official rhetoric — “judges considered social circumstances” — with a sociological reading that sees mass trials as a factory for obedience, not reintegration.
Through this lens, he exposes the paradox between judicial rationality and social absurdity, questioning whether impartial justice is possible amid structural inequalities.
The State Confronting a New Generation
El Belghiti identifies the core of the crisis: the state does not truly understand this generation, yet believes it can be contained using old tools — official statements, temporary media openness, and heavy sentences.
He warns that such symbolic management of anger does not quell unrest but accumulates it, replaying the same scenario every decade: new youth, new anger, same institutional responses.
Numbers as a Mirror of Collective Failure
In conclusion, El Belghiti argues that judicial figures do not demonstrate the strength of justice but rather the weakness of policy.
They reflect a failure to embrace youth, to understand social energies, and to provide horizons worthy of their global aspirations.
For him, these youths, “raised by despair,” did not choose confrontation; they found themselves forced into it due to the absence of alternatives.
He closes with piercing questions for readers:
Can a nation build its future on police reports instead of reform agendas?
Can trust be restored when the state sees its youth as a threat rather than a promise?
Or are we witnessing a new cycle of “national discipline,” where files remain closed until the next protest in a decade?
