Morocco upholds 30-month sentence for activist’s blasphemous T-shirt
LGBT/feminist/atheist activist is in a Morocco prison for questioning Allah’s sexuality
An appeals court in Rabat, Morocco, has upheld a 30-month prison sentence for feminist/atheist/LGBT activist Ibtissame “Betty” Lachgar, 50, who was convicted of blasphemy for an online post that showed her wearing a T-shirt displaying the word “Allah” in Arabic, followed by the English words “is lesbian.”
The post also stated that Islam is “like any religious ideology… fascist, phallocratic and misogynistic.”
Lachgar, a clinical psychologist, is the co-founder and leader of the activist group MALI (Mouvement alternatif pour les libertés individuelles).. Since its founding in 2009, MALI has organized many controversial events, including a “Ramadan Picnic” in 2009 to protest the Moroccan law that requires fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and a “Kiss-Ins” in 2013 in support of three teenagers who were arrested for posting a picture on Facebook showing themselves kissing.
After her latest Facebook post, Lachgar was arrested in August, convicted, and sentenced on Sept. 3 to 30 months in prison plus a fine of 50,000 dirhams (about $5,500). That sentence was upheld on Oct. 6 by an appeals court in Rabat, Morocco. Lachgar’s attorneys plan a further appeal.
Under Morocco’s penal code, those convicted of offending Islam can be sentenced to up to two years in prison, but can also receive alternative sentences such as house arrest or community service.
Lachgar told the court that the message on her T-shirt was a feminist slogan that had nothing to do with Islam in particular.
“Her defense team is set to appeal the sentence again before a higher court, said one of her lawyers, Ghizlane Mamouni. They will also submit a request to transform her sentence to an “alternate penalty,” she added. Under Moroccan law, such penalties could include house arrest or public service. Lachgar’s lawyers had previously requested her release on medical grounds, saying she needed to receive treatment for cancer.”
Lachgar needed “critical surgery on her left arm”, the lawyers said in August, adding that her doctors “warned of amputation if the surgery is not carried out”.
The Support Committee for Ibtissame (Betty) Lachgar has launched a Change.org petition calling for her immediate release. More than 5,700 people have signed it.
The committee stated, “We remind everyone that Ibtissame’s ‘crime’ is not a crime. The T-shirt that triggered hundreds of death threats and a heavy prison sentence was never worn in Morocco. Moroccan law, along with international conventions ratified by the Kingdom, guarantees freedom of opinion and expression. ”
They called on the public to sign the petition “not as an endorsement of the message on Ibtissame’s T-shirt, but because criminalizing an artistic or activist provocation places freedom of expression, a cornerstone of any rule of law, in jeopardy, and sends a deeply worrying signal: that intellectual, artistic, or symbolic critique can be treated as a crime”.
