What was Amina Filali’s fault, a Moroccan girl of only 16, who was raped and then humiliated to marry the rapist? Justification: marrying the rapist is to preserve the honour of the victim’s family.
Morocco needs to wake up: we are not living in medieval times. A crime is a crime and should be punished with full force. It’s not state’s job to find loopholes in the system to help the criminals.
Government officials may come up with lame excuses such as a judge can permit such marriage only if all parties, the victim and the rapist, agree. Needless to say that pressure is applied on the victim’s family to preserve the honour of the family and tribe. Even the law is bent, as happened in Amina’ case, to allow underage marriage – legal age of marriage in morocco is 18.
Instead of living all her life with humiliated feelings, Amina decided to die; she drank rat poison but that was not the end of her story. Her rapist husband was so outraged that he dragged the dying girl down the street by hair.
Human rights campaigners in Morocco and elsewhere shall not let the case die its own death after few days of media attention. They shall force the country’s legislators to amend the laws in favour of rape victims. Legislators need to rise above the centuries old traditions of preserving the family honour at the cost of human rights which in fact permit more rapes.
MASOOD KHAN
Jubail, Saudi Arabia
