I recently had the experience of trying to help a Moroccan man track down information on his brother's murder investigation. His brother was living and working in Detroit. He was murdered last year. Since that time, the murder victim's family in Morocco has received little to no information from either the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Moroccan Consulate General of New York, or the Detroit Police Department. They were actually only originally contacted after the death through the murder victim's friends in Detroit who had realized that their friend had been murdered. Granted, the Moroccan family's English language skills are practically nonexistent, but I expressed my dismay that they hadn't received more help from the Moroccan consulate. The Moroccan brother explained to me that an individual death, even by murder, just isn't treated with the same care and concern in Morocco as it would be in the United States. He told me that the Moroccan consulate had only agreed to help transfer the body back to Morocco after the family went to the press. The friends of the murder victim had been trying to raise money in Detroit in order to send his body back to his family.
We were able to track down and obtain the police report through the Victim Services Department of the Detroit Police Department, but it took some time as the murder victim's Arabic name had been bungled miserably. We were also able to track down some Arabic, English, and French speaking lawyers through an Arab American institution in Michigan who may be able to help this man and his family.
But, what I found most interesting throughout this process, was the difference in perceptions of the police force, the government, lawyers, and public institutions in general. It seems to me that Moroccans in general have an inherent distrust of the police and of public institutions. Even public institutions with the obvious intent of assisting them. This is a problem which OMDH has encountered time and time again during their investigations and fact finding missions and in interviewing victims of human rights abuses -- the victims are afraid to reveal too much, afraid to accuse, afraid to name abusers and agressors, afraid to implicate themselves in anyway, afraid of making themselves an easy target for retribution by the police and the government.
I found this to be absolutely true in trying to interview and obtain information from this man whom I was trying very hard to help. I became frustrated, and a cultural divide became apparent. This man had traveled to Rabat specifically to speak with myself and another American intern, just because he had heard that two English speaking interns were working at a human rights organization -- OMDH. I had to be incredibly patient, win his trust, and go over the details multiple times, in order to make sure that I had received the complete story. During subsequent interviews, he would reveal vital pieces of information, and I couldn't believe that he hadn't already told me this information in a prior interview. He was very wary of speaking with a lawyer -- he wanted to discuss the possibility with his family first, even though I explained the concept of confidentiality. He was very wary of talking to the Detroit police department via an interpreter, even though I felt that he had important information which might help the police in their ostensibly stalled investigation. The entire process was fascinating, and it made me realize that government, legal, and police protections, which I take for granted in the US, not to say that our legal system and/or government and/or police force are perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but that this man does not enjoy that same degree of trust in his police force and government, that he actually fears his police force and government -- the institutions which should be operating on his behalf and protecting his interests.
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