The Amazigh World Congress (AWC) has learned with dismay of the murder of two young women, Maren Ueland from Norway and Louisa Vesterager Jespersen from Denmark on 17 December 2018, near the village of Imlil in the High Atlas Mountains. Indignant by this savage act, the AWC condemns with the greatest vigor this double crime, which can only be committed by cowards without humanity.
The AWC sends its most sincere condolences to the families of the innocent victims and to the Norwegian and Danish peoples and expresses their deepest sympathies.The AWC also wishes to express its total solidarity with the inhabitants of Imlil shocked and overwhelmed by this terrible tragedy.
We call on public opinion not to make amalgamation between the peaceful inhabitants of Atlas and their tolerant Amazigh culture, and followers of Islamist terror from elsewhere.
This horrific attack attributed to members of the radical Islamist nebula, means that Morocco remains plagued by Salafist ideology despite its imposing security apparatus and despite official speeches on the so-called “tolerant Moroccan Islam”. In Morocco, obscurantist Salafist ideology circulates freely in schools, universities, mosques and some media. At the same time, the educational system closes the door to diversity, falsifies the history of the country and draws its civilizational references from the motherland of Wahabism, Saudi Arabia. Under these conditions, it is logical that citizens face an “identity crisis” and become easy prey to Daesh. As a result, Morocco, like the other North African states, harvests and will continue to harvest for a long time the bitter fruits of their hypocrisy.
To get out of this impasse, the governments of Morocco and other North African countries must imperatively break with the Arabo-islamism and draw from the depths of the indigenous history of this region, the springs of their identity, while opting resolutely for the path of modernity and progress.
In any case, the states of North Africa but also their partners, especially European ones, are responsible for the dramas and the desolation that Islamist terrorists regularly provoke. It is therefore up to everyone to assume their responsibility and act sincerely and comprehensively against Islamism and its sponsors. The AWC also calls on democratic forces and civil society organizations on both sides of the Mediterranean to become more involved in the fight against this retrograde and mortifying ideology.
Paris, 8/12/2968 – 20/12/2018The AWC Office