Moroccans were known as some of the fiercest fighters among the troops of right-wing General Francisco Franco in Spain’s 1936-1939 civil war.
But 70 years later, Moroccan campaigners see Franco’s “Moorish troops” as victims and seek an investigation to establish “the truth” about their fate.
Moroccans who fought for Franco were often recruited by force, says Abdesslam Boutayeb, president of the Moroccan Center for Common Memory and the Future (CMCA), which is trying to raise the issue with Spain.
Spanish historian Maria Rosa de Madariaga questions such views, saying Moroccans joined Franco’s troops voluntarily.
When Franco set out to topple Spain’s republican government, he launched his uprising from Morocco, the north of which was a Spanish protectorate at the time.
An estimated 80,000 Moroccans were recruited to fight alongside Francoists in the war, which claimed about 500,000 lives.
The Moroccans had a savage reputation and were greatly feared, as was Franco’s personal Moorish Guard after the war.
Francoists spread stories about the Moroccans’ cruelty to frighten their opponents, Moroccan researcher Boughaleb El Attar wrote in the Spanish daily El Pais.
The stories, which El Attar sees as having a racist component, contributed to a negative image of Moroccans that still lingers in Spain to this day.
Franco’s Moroccan soldiers were usually poor inhabitants of the northern mountainous Rif region, who joined the general’s troops to be fed and to get a salary, according to testimonies of war veterans.
Despite Catholicism forming an important part of his nationalist ideology, Franco did not hesitate to recruit Muslims to whom he presented his uprising as a joint Christian-Muslim fight against godless “reds.”
The Moroccans joined a foreign war the real causes of which they knew nothing about, El Attar writes.
Many were recruited against their will, Boutayeb said.
The CMCA wants to take advantage of Spain’s 2007 Law of Historic Memory, which seeks to restore the dignity of Franco’s forgotten republican victims.
Measures include support to groups digging up remains of republicans from mass graves.
The mass graves are also believed to contain bones of Moroccan soldiers, tens of thousands of whom went missing in the war, according to figures given by Boutayeb.
The CMCA has the backing of the National Rally of Independents, one of the main parties in Morocco’s coalition government.
Emilio Silva represents the Association for the Recovery of Historic Memory, the biggest group exhuming republican remains from mass graves.
The Moroccan soldiers “supported a coup” against Spain’s legal government, and “came here to kill people,” Silva said.
“They were given pensions, while the republicans got nothing,” he complains.
Most observers, however, agree that the pensions now received by about 2,000 Moroccan war veterans or widows are miserably small.
Although the Franco regime fixed the level of the pensions in an “irrevocable” decision, it would be fair for the Moroccans to get the same — higher — amount of pension money that Spanish war veterans get, de Madariaga wrote.
Since her personal telephone number was posted online, Hong Kong democracy advocate and Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions chairperson Carol Ng has received menacing calls from strangers and been bombarded with messages calling her a “cockroach.” She is not alone. A sophisticated and shady Web site called HK Leaks has ramped up its “doxxing” — where people’s personal details are published online — of Hong Kong democracy advocates, targeting those it says have broken Hong Kong’s National Security Law. Promoted by groups linked to the Chinese Chinese Communist Party and hosted on Russia-based servers, HK Leaks has become the most prominent “doxxing”
A Malaysian student whose cellphone was stolen while he was sleeping has tracked down the culprit: a monkey who took photo and video selfies with the device before abandoning it. Zackrydz Rodzi, 20, on Wednesday said that his mobile phone was missing from his bedroom when he woke up on Saturday. He found the phone’s casing under his bed, but there was no sign of robbery in his house in Johor state. JUNGLE When his father saw a monkey the next day, he searched in the jungle behind his house. Using his brother’s cellphone to call his own device, he found it covered
‘CONFESSED’: A court in Beijing said that former CCP member Ren Zhiqiang abused his power at a state firm and embezzled almost US$7.14 million of public funds A Chinese tycoon who called Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) a clown and criticized his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic was yesterday jailed for 18 years for corruption, bribery and embezzlement of public funds. Ren Zhiqiang (任志強) — once among the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) inner circle — disappeared from the public eye in March, shortly after penning an essay that lambasted Xi’s pandemic response. His outspokenness had earned the former chairman of state-owned property developer Huayuan Group the nickname “Big Cannon.” Yesterday’s verdict said that Ren embezzled almost 50 million yuan (US$7.4 million) of public funds and accepted bribes worth 1.25 million
AUSTRALIAN SITE: China has had a contract with SSC’s Yatharagga station since at least 2011, but the last time it used it was in June 2013. No final date has been given China would lose access to a strategic space tracking station in Western Australia when its contract expires, the facility’s owners said, a decision that cuts into Beijing’s expanding space exploration and navigational capabilities in the Pacific region. The Swedish Space Corp (SSC) has had a contract allowing Beijing access to the satellite antenna at the station since at least 2011. The station is located next to an SSC satellite station primarily used by the US and its agencies, including NASA. The Swedish state-owned company said it would not enter into any new contracts at the Australian site to support Chinese customers after
RSS