It is a drama revealing a silent crisis playing out in Morocco. An isolated farm transformed into a clandestine psychiatric clinic was dismantled on December 26 in the Marrakech region. Around twenty people suffering from mental disorders were held there in degrading conditions, sometimes for years, without any medical care. The victims have since been transferred to a hospital and an investigation has been opened to “human trafficking”.
This tragedy echoes the affair of the Bouya Omar mausoleum in 2015, located a few kilometers away. At the time, more than 800 mentally ill people were discovered in equally dramatic conditions: chained, tortured and subjected to exorcism practices in a place renowned for its alleged supernatural powers to cure mental illness and addiction. “Several reasons push families to send their loved ones there: some naively hope that traditional psychological treatment will lead to a cure, others, aware of the absence of a solution, simply seek to get rid of it,” explains Omar Arbib, president of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH) in Marrakech, who fears the existence of many other similar places of detention.
Less than one psychiatrist per 100,000 inhabitants
This drama is the reflection of an ignored problem
Morocco
