Rabat- Moroccan rapper Mouad Belghouat, jailed in 2012 for insulting two police officers, began a 48-hour hunger strike on Thursday in protest of the conditions of his detention, he announced on his FaceBook page.
Mouad Belghouat's decision to go on a hunger strike comes as a protest against the“scandalous”conditions he is being incarcerated in at the Oukacha prison in Casablanca.
“The prison’s authorities treat me in a humiliating way, with no respect to my human dignity during the check process. They also prevent me from listening to music and browsing newspapers,”Mouad Belghouat wrote on his FaceBook page.
“I know that all these things are my rights. But, I wonder why I am not allowed to enjoy them,” he added.
Belghouat, who goes by the stage name Al-Haqed (The Rancorous One) was previously a pro-democracy February 20 Movement activist, whose songs revolve around themes of corruption and social injustice.
He was arrested earlier this year, as he was enteringthe Mohamed V soccer stadium in Casablanca. He was convicted of“insulting two police officers in the exercise of their duties”in the Court of First Instance in Casablanca on June 11. The court sentenced him to 4 months in prison, with a fine estimated at 500 MAD ($48 US), and required to pay compensation to the first police officer victim 5000 MAD ($480 US) and to the second 1000MAD ($18 US@@this can’t be right, dividing by 8 is $125. Please check the conversions).
Belghouat’s trouble with the lawis not new. In 2011, he was jailed for four months for getting into a fight with a pro-government supporter in one of Casablanca’s poorest suburbs.
A year later, Belghouat was sentenced to one year in prison in connection with a controversial song he wrote called “Dogs of the State.”The main evidence against the rapper in connection with that charge was a YouTube video containing a photo-montage of a policeman whose head had been replaced by that of a donkey.Belghouat was subsequently released from prison on March 29, 2013. Later that year, the Moroccan rapper was awarded a prize for integrity by the watchdog group Transparency Morocco, for his “honesty and the justice of his fight for an integrated and transparent society.”