The Amazigh World Congress Expresses Solidarity with Aassid and Dr. Koullab

The Amazigh World Congress, led by the activist Rachid Rakha, issued a statement this evening expressing its full solidarity with the Amazigh activists Ahmed Aassid and Dr. Abdelkhaleq Koullab, who are subjected to a defamation campaign that has crossed all limits.

The statement reads: “The Amazigh World Congress is following with great concern the incitement campaign against Dr. Abdelkhaleq Koullab and researcher Ahmed Aassid, a campaign that has escalated to the point of threats of physical elimination due to their ideas and convictions defending Amazigh origin and history, as well as their rejection of the forced Arabization imposed on Moroccans, and the falsification of their history and the distortion of their culture and identity, deeply rooted in North African history.

These threats and the ferocious incitement campaign, which have proliferated frighteningly on social media pages and which endanger the lives and physical safety of Dr. Koullab and Aassid, compel us to sound the alarm before these extremists, who seek through their radical ideas to deprive Moroccans of their legitimate right to express their opinions and convictions, carry out their threats. These extremists seek to prevent the staunch defense of their origin, culture, and identity, as well as the values of human rights, democracy, modernity, and equality.

We call on the active forces of the Amazigh movement and all the vibrant and democratic forces to respond to these threats with knowledge and argumentation, and to stand firmly against all obscurantist and retrograde ideas issued by extremists living outside the current Moroccan era, the era of the new Constitution that protects cultural diversity and linguistic plurality, and that guarantees all Moroccans their right to express their opinions and ideas free from any manifestations of extremism.

We also call on the Public Prosecutor and the Moroccan authorities to intervene to put an end to these extremist incitement practices that establish the return of ‘vigilante justice’ and call for bloodshed, and to strike with an iron fist anyone who dares to incite extremism and terrorism.”