{{A Moroccan rapper Mouad Belghouat, jailed in July for defaming the police, has begun a hunger strike in protest at the conditions of his detention, several friends said on Monday in claims denied by the prison.}}<\/p>\n
“He decided to begin a hunger strike on Monday after a series of provocations and in the absence of a response to his demands to meet the prison director as well as a doctor, as he feels physically weak,” Maria Karim, a close friend and activist with the February 20 protest movement said.<\/p>\n
The prison authorities have confiscated all his writings saying that some of them undermine public institutions, but did not elaborate, according to his friends.<\/p>\n
Mohamed Bendriss, the director of the prison in Casablanca where Belghouat is being held, categorically denied that he had begun a hunger strike.<\/p>\n
Belghouat, who goes by his rapper name Al-Haqed (The Rancorous One), was considered a public face of the February 20 movement that was born in 2011 during the Arab Spring, and which demands sweeping political reforms in Morocco.<\/p>\n
He was first convicted in May last year over a song he wrote called “Dogs of the State,” which denounced police corruption and was deemed an affront to the entire police service.<\/p>\n
The main evidence against the rapper was a YouTube video containing a photo-montage of a policeman whose head had been replaced by that of a donkey.<\/p>\n
According to Human Rights Watch, Belghouat denied any connection with the video other than that it was set to his song.<\/p>\n
The New York-based rights group said the conviction “shows the gap between the strong free-expression language in Morocco’s 2011 constitution and the continuing intolerance for those who criticise state institutions.”<\/p>\n
Last month, the musician was awarded a prize for integrity by the watchdog Transparency Morocco, for his “honesty and the justice of his fight for an integrated and transparent society.”<\/p>\n
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{{A Moroccan rapper Mouad Belghouat, jailed in July for defaming the police, has begun a hunger strike in protest at the conditions of his detention, several friends said on Monday in claims denied by the prison.}} “He decided to begin a hunger strike on Monday after a series of provocations and in the absence of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-5642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5642"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=5642"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=5642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}