Moroccan GenZ protesters want to ‘defend their right to a dignified life’
میدل-ایست-آی - 1404-07-14 18:24:15
Moroccan GenZ protesters want to ‘defend their right to a dignified life’
Along the Atlantic promenade that lines Casablanca’s wide sandy coastline, the iconic spot where people usually gather to play football on the beach is now buzzing for totally different reasons.
Small clusters of young people are scattered, facing a press hub that at first seems more substantial than the protest it is there to cover, and framed by a strong plainclothes police presence.
Following the daily vote on the group’s Discord server, the youth-led protest movement GenZ 212 has called on its members in Morocco’s economic capital to meet at 6pm for another demonstration demanding better public services and an end to corruption.
After a week of daily protests across the North African kingdom, the meeting point in Casablanca on Saturday has been set on two opposite ends of a tramway line in the Ain Diab neighbourhood, by the sea.
A moment of stillness stretches as the press, police and the timidly gathered youth size each other up. Doubts ripple across the square at the sight of the modest turnout. Has the division between two separate locations weakened the demonstration? It hardly matters.
Young leaders break the lull by calling out to the scattered groups. The square quickly comes alive, a crowd gathers around a bench where orators stand, and the space transforms into an agora gathering around 150 people.
It is the first time Ibtisam and Ilham, both 25-year-old professionals in the city, have joined the recently formed movement.
“We came to defend our right to a dignified life,” Ibtisam told Middle East Eye, sweeping her hand toward the protestors, calm yet galvanised by the pulse of relentless chanting.
“We are not scared, even if it is true that some parents have kept their children from coming, fearing things might get out of hand,” Ilham adds.
Police crackdown
Starting on 27 September, the first GenZ 212 gatherings caught authorities off guard with their peaceful though disruptive spontaneity.
Police moved forcefully to quash them early through mass arrests. Images of protesters being whisked away mid-interview to field reporters circulated on social media, sparking a wave of parodies.
A peak of violence then marked a breaking point that stunned Moroccan society on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Clashes between security forces and protesters erupted in small towns and regional centres, injuring more than 500 officers according to the interior ministry.
In Lqliaa and Oujda, a police crackdown left three dead and two gravely injured following excessive force by law enforcement, as described by Amnesty International, while a gendarmerie base was attacked by masked, unaffiliated individuals.
Despite official statements framing the response as self-defence, citizen videos showing street battles and fierce police brutality went viral, sending shockwaves through the country and its diaspora.
In the days that followed, testimonies from families of victims gave faces and names to these hard numbers.
Among them were Amine, a medical student who lost his left leg after a police van deliberately rammed into him in Oujda, and Abdessamad, a film graduate shot dead while documenting the clashes around the police outpost in Lqliaa.
Their names are now acclaimed in GenZ 212 gatherings, celebrated as vivid examples of lives crushed by authoritarian repression.
‘[Security forces] too are sons of this nation, ordinary people like us, and just as concerned as we are’
- GenZ 212 rally speaker
This bloody turning point marked a shift in law enforcement strategy. Authorities have since allowed rallies to proceed peacefully while tightly monitoring major city arteries and maintaining a visible presence.
The easing of security pressure was largely forced by huge public outrage, while the urban unrest drew international media attention squarely onto Morocco’s domestic scene.
GenZ 212 has emphasized its peaceful intent both in its written statements and during its daily gatherings, such as in Casablanca on Saturday, where one of the speakers standing on the public bench took the floor to salute the security forces.
“They too are sons of this nation, ordinary people like us, and just as concerned as we are,” he says from his platform.
Stadiums rise, living standards fall
Against the backdrop of a picturesque sunset, strollers join the crowd already gathered, and they clap along to show support for the demands.
Families are there too. A mother gently scolds her little boy as he darts through the crowd, dancing wildly to the rhythm of the chants: “No health, no education, but the stadiums are top-notch!”
GenZ 212, which describes itself as a "space for discussion" on "issues that concern all citizens, such as health, education and the fight against corruption", has emerged at a time when socioeconomic conditions are deteriorating for most Moroccans.
Fuel prices have surged since 2022, while the worst drought in over three decades has depleted water reserves in dams and aquifers, pushing up food prices and worsening living conditions in peripheral areas.
On 11 August, the city of Khouribga was banned from holding a citizen protest against the failing water supply, which suffers from poor quality and frequent cuts.
A metric from the High Commission for Planning highlights the trend: 76 percent of Moroccan households report that their standard of living has declined over the past 12 months, reflecting a steady drop in purchasing power across the country.
Meanwhile, the privatisation of the education and health sectors is accelerating. The pivotal project to expand health insurance coverage is failing to address a growing fragmentation of the healthcare system following the 2015 market opening, which allowed private investors into clinics.
This shift has emphasised territorial disparities in coverage and indirectly benefited private establishments, while public hospitals struggle with deteriorating services.
The systemic challenges of national policy manifest in local incidents where the gaps in healthcare access become tragically tangible.
By mid-September, a grisly streak of deaths at a hospital in Agadir underscored this human cost: eight pregnant women admitted for caesarean sections died, prompting citizen sit-ins and becoming emblematic of the failures of the public healthcare system.
The shiny inauguration of Rabat’s renovated Moulay Abdallah Stadium in early September set the discordant tone for outbreak of unrest that followed. Completed in a record 18 months, it coincided with the second anniversary of the al-Haouz earthquake, with many victims still bracing themselves to face a third winter in tents.
Morocco has turned sport into a showcase of its economic ambitions and a pillar of its nation-branding strategy, pouring at least $5bn into preparations for the 2030 World Cup it will co-host with Spain and Portugal.
‘I only wish the best for my country. It’s good that the youth are expressing the frustration we all share’
- Abdallah, middle-aged protestor
Yet the clustering of four stadiums in Rabat lays bare the widening gap between flagship projects polished to attract investors and tourists, and the daily hardships faced by most Moroccans.
While this grand vision plays out on a national stage, local communities feel the immediate impact.
In Benslimane, residents must make way for what is touted as the world’s largest stadium, budgeted at $500m. In September, parents protested the planned demolition of a school after authorities instructed them to enrol their children in four alternative schools located more than 10km away.
This local case underscores Morocco’s uneven development, leaving segments of the population sidelined in the race for growth. Youth bear the brunt: in 2025, nearly 22 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds remain unemployed, according to official figures.
The contrast between Morocco’s curated international image and on-the-ground realities, along with the punitive handling of popular protests, inspired an online commentator to a striking comparison.
“The Moroccan government acts like a Moroccan mother receiving guests, scolding her children to behave and not eat too much, and replacing the old living-room mattresses so they don’t ruin the decor,” he wrote on Instagram.
‘It damages the country’s image’
In Casablanca, Abdallah, now retired, decided to attend the protest with his 15-year-old daughter to show he shares the young organisers’ demands.
“I only wish the best for my country. It’s good that the youth are expressing the frustration we all share,” he tells MEE.
“However, at some point, there will have to be some structure, so that real dialogue with the authorities can take place,” he adds.
On Thursday, GenZ 212 released a statement addressed to King Mohammed VI, calling for the dismissal of the government “for its failure to protect the constitutional rights of Moroccans and respond to their social demands".
It also called for the launch of a "fair judicial process" to prosecute those responsible for corruption.
Earlier, Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch expressed the government's willingness to "respond to the social demands" of the young demonstrators and its "readiness for dialogue".
The current prime minister, a business billionaire, is seen by Moroccans as an epitome of the country’s inequalities. He notably controls the country’s leading hydrocarbon distribution group and one of its largest agribusiness conglomerates.
GenZ 212, which has attracted over 180,000 new members on its Discord page in just a fortnight, is anonymous and leaderless. It presents itself as apolitical and rejects any form of centralisation or mediation through intermediary bodies, whether unions or political parties.
These characteristics could make it difficult for authorities to negotiate with or co-opt its members, according to analysts, even as they try to deflate the movement by redirecting its momentum through established, conventional institutional channels.
The protest movement, which comes from a generation born between the late 1990s and early 2010s - raised on the instant connectivity of social media and amplified by the decentralised nature of Discord servers, stands in contrast to its predecessors, such as the February 20 Movement, which shook the country in the wake of the 2011 uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa.
Yet, the sediments of past popular struggles run through the protest culture of these youth.
The wide repertoire of chants bears the imprint of symbols inherited from the litany of aborted popular movements in Morocco’s contemporary history, the most recent being the Rif Hirak, which saw the northern marginalised region rise in 2019.
“Zefzafi, be at peace, we are taking on the struggle!” the crowd shouts, invoking Nasser Zefzafi, the prominent Rif Hirak leader sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Meanwhile, as the night deepens in the Ain Diab neighbourhood of Casablanca, the public speakers urge the crowd to disperse in an orderly manner while members of the core protesters collect rubbish, setting a civic example.
As people scatter, undercover police officers converge on a pair of foreign women at the crowd’s edge, quietly moving them aside for questioning.
“We don’t allow unaccredited foreign journalists. Moroccans can take photos and go live all they want. Why should foreigners leave Jamaa El Fna [Marrakech’s famous market square] to film what’s wrong here? It damages the country’s image,” they say.
