HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES Youths demand that violators be punished

The commission is similar to one set up to look at apartheid brutality.
AL HOCEIMA, Morocco (AP) -- Fists raised and voices thundering, several dozen youths shouted down a public hearing in this Rif Mountains region known for its rebellious streak: "Today, today -- not tomorrow! We demand trial of the executioners!"
For 45 minutes they clapped, chanted and waved clenched fists until the members of a truth commission left the hall.
The outburst reflects the mixed Moroccan opinions about the panel set up by King Mohammed VI to "close the file on past human rights violations" -- four decades of disappearances, detention and torture of thousands of political opponents -- most during the late King Hassan II's reign.
The Equity and Reconciliation Commission, the first of its kind in the Arab world, was set up in 2002 and patterned after South Africa's panel that examined apartheid-era brutality. But the South African system invited perpetrators to confess their abuses in return for amnesty; Morocco's version has no mandate to punish perpetrators or even to name them.
It covers what Moroccans call the "years of lead," or rule of the gun, from 1956 when the country won independence from France until 1999, when Hassan died. But there will be no finger-pointing, especially at the former king. His son and successor has insisted the commission is "not a court" but a forum to "examine without complexes or shame that page in our history."
The panel has held seven sessions since December, taking oral testimony from victims or their relatives. These have been broadcast on Moroccan television and posted on the commission's Web site.
Received thousands of complaints
Headed by a former Marxist and political prisoner, Driss Benzekri, the 17-member commission has received more than 22,000 submissions related to human rights abuses, and is following up with site visits to conduct in-depth interviews. Government brutality was directed against an array of opponents, leftists or Islamic activists, from political parties to trade unions.
The volume of work prompted the commission to postpone an April deadline to report its findings. Among recommendations they're discussing is reform of state institutions and a call to security forces to respect human rights.
Commission members argue that naming perpetrators would violate their legal rights. Also, many of them are dead or removed from their posts, says commission member Driss El Yazami, secretary general of the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights.
He and others say the main thing is to make sure abuses aren't repeated.
That sentiment doesn't sit well in places like Al Hoceima, where the commission held hearings in early May with about 350 attendees in a wedding hall overlooking the Mediterranean.
Al Hoceima is in a region populated by Berbers, a North African minority that claims to predate the Arab conquest in the 7th century. It has suffered extreme poverty and state neglect since a Berber rebellion was quashed in 1958.
Al Hoceima was one of several Rif Mountain towns where riots in 1984 led to a government crackdown and imprisonment, disappearances and deaths of hundreds of Berbers.