Morocco: Two teens face 3 years in prison for a lesbian kiss

[davidn3600]

Two teenage girls were kissing and hugging on a rooftop in Marrakesh, Morocco, late last week when one of their cousins took their photo.

After seeing the photo, the mother of one of the girls called the police, who immediately arrested them and took them to jail. The girls now face up to three years in prison for their crime: an act of homosexuality.

The two girls, 16 and 17, were held in an adult prison — instead of a juvenile detention center — for about three days, Larbi Elhabbache, vice president of the Marrakesh chapter of the Moroccan Association of Human Rights, said in a phone interview with the Post. The association learned about the arrest through an acquaintance of one of the girls and is now communicating with the girls’ lawyer, Elhabbache said. The girls were scheduled to appear in a court hearing Friday.

The girls are being charged with “licentious or unnatural acts with an individual of the same sex” under Article 489 of the Moroccan penal code, according to a statement from L’Union Feministe Libre, an organization that said it met with the 17-year-old’s mother. Punishment can range from six months to three years in prison.

L’Union Feministe Libre strongly condemned the arrest as well as “the treatment they are suffering in prison,” it wrote.

“We call out the feminist’s movement, human rights associations and Moroccan lawyers to end the series of arrests Moroccan Men and Women face on daily basis and the injustice we are now living in.”

The arrests spurred outrage on Twitter, where some urged people to use the hashtag #freethegirls.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/11/04/teenage-girls-in-morocco-could-face-up-to-3-years-in-prison-for-kissing

[patsimp]

1. This is so horrifying.

[LuvNewcastle]

2. Sometimes I wish I could pick up these countries

and shake them.

[getagrip_already]

3. this is penceland......

[lpbk2713]

4. Two teenagers expressing their fondness for one another.

The authorities definitely went overboard here. And I fear what will happen to them
in a Moroccan prison will be much worse than they could do to each other.

[LiberalLovinLug]

5. Careful there liberals

we don't want to go and dump all over their culture.

Don't you get it. Republicans are demonizing Muslims or anyone the comes from the middle east, heck, anyone with darker skin than them.....

....so that means we must automatically DEFEND all of them. Its just their culture and we shouldn't criticize anything they do. They've been treating women this way for thousands of years, who are we to tell them to act differently? I mean, we could find our own cherry picked examples right here in the good ole US of A to counter.




(sadly, and dangerously, for some this not)

[davidn3600]

6. Notice how few replies to this?

Pretty telling.

If this happened in a Christian country...I'd have 200+ replies right now.

Sad.

[LiberalLovinLug]

7. and sad that brave women like Ayaan Hirsi are largely ignored by the left and the right

Fighting for a voice to criticize the Islamic religion and its hold on the Middle East. With her book "Heretic"

Even the esteemed Jon Stewart, whom I respect immensely, is guilty of falling for this false trope.

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/07/no_one_exposes_western_liberals_faulty_thinking_on_islam_better_than_self_professed_%E2%80%9Cheretic%E2%80%9D_ayaan_hirsi_ali/

Back to Hirsi Ali and “Heretic.” Hirsi Ali summed up her book’s theses in an Op-Ed for the Wall Street Journal. Radical Islam now motivates terrorism and warfare across the globe, but “by far,” she writes, “the most numerous victims of Muslim violence . . . are Muslims themselves.” She considers it “foolish to insist, as Western leaders habitually do, that the violent acts committed in the name of Islam can somehow be divorced from the religion itself.” Her conclusion: “Islam is not a religion of peace.” (Italics hers.)

Hirsi Ali does not, however, contend that most Muslims are violent. On the contrary, peaceful followers of Islam “are the clear majority throughout the Muslim world.” But the jihadi-minded account for, by her conservative estimate, at least 3 percent of the religion’s 1.6 billion votaries, or 48 million people. The problem, for her, lies in “the call to violence and the justification for it . . . explicitly stated in the sacred texts of Islam.” To counter this, she proposes an Islamic reformation, one that would lead Muslims to reject their canon’s calls for violence, as do, by and large, Jews and Christians today.

.....

Hirsi Ali had her own moderating version of reform in mind, of course, and those already working to bring it about. “I stand with them. I hope you stand with them.”

Stewart replied, “Right. No, I mean . . . I think people single out Islam, as though there’s something inherently wrong with it that wasn’t wrong with other religions.” (He would repeat this trope throughout the interview.)

We as liberals are not allowed to criticize Islam and its poisonous effect on women, gays, non-Muslims, and yes, middle eastern liberals, students etc..as well, because.....echoing the Republicans favorite response, they mimic "but but but others are just as bad" (even though there is no comparison)

[smirkymonkey]

8. Horrible! Those poor girls!

This is so wrong!