The History, Memory, Journalist and Judge

The Moroccan daily newspaper, Al Jarida Al Oula, published a series of testimonies given by "great witnesses" and recorded by the Equity and Reconciliation Commission (IER). These testimonies have caused a particular feedback. The same thing is applied to the filing of a civil complaint seeking the suspension of the publication of these testimonies and the restitution of historical narratives published without the permission of the Advisory Council on Human Rights (CCDH), the institution that is in charge of the IER archives.

The court issued its ruling. The fact remains that this case raises many questions on the freedom of the press, the right to access to information, the archive law, the relationship between memory and history...

Without claiming to answer all these questions, this contribution aims to illuminate these necessary and legitimate debates, which should be public, pluralist and peaceful.

Thus, it should be noted that the initiative to register the testimonies of a number of political stakeholders was approved only after long and hot debates among the IER members. Opponents of the idea, including the writer of this article, gave two arguments.

The first was the principle of fairness itself. Given the list proposed by the proponents of the idea, we were only few members to draw the attention to the limited number of stakeholders who would be solicited and we wondered about the criteria adopted in drawing up this list. We stressed that it would be impossible to listen to all stakeholders appeared in the list in such a short time.

The second argument laid stress on the complexity of any attempt at oral history, which requires a scientific methodology, epistemological precautions and rigorous preparation, without respect of which, as we will try to explain, no one can talk about historical work.

This debate revealed in passing a consubstantial fact about all truth commissions around the world and to which our friend Eduardo Gonzalez, the coordinator of the final report of the Peruvian truth commission had drawn attention at the training session for the IER members, held in March 2004: the inevitable tension between members of legal training and those who had training in humanities. Finally, the project would be approved because our president, the late Driss Benzekri, did not want to disrupt an initiative of a member despite strong resistance to which I can testify, and because we encouraged, as regards this issue, public hearings or other problems, consensus and mutual conviction rather than vote.

Now that some testimonies were published, the whole Nation is actually confronted with the questions that we raised in those days: What value should be given to these testimonies? How much truth do they contain? Do they constitute our national history? And if not, how to undertake this huge project of writing of this history, in particular the recent and obviously the painful and more complex one? Is it possible at a time when some witnesses disappeared forever, and while our archives are in their current status? And finally what should be our role, as then IER members or enlightened citizens today?

In this regard, it can be argued calmly that such testimonies alone are not the historical truth. Without diminishing the quality of the witnesses, these testimonies cannot constitute but a minor and partial part of the memory of these stakeholders; a memory which is, like any other memory, subjective, selective and, if need arises, exploited negatively, knowingly or more often unknowingly, by the person who expresses it. If that part of truth is to be taken into account, it must absolutely be confronted with other contemporary testimonies to the same events from as many other sources as possible, including written ones. This is a work that only historians can do. Neither we, IER members in the past and citizens today, nor journalists.

Thus, assuming that it has been systematically and rigorously done, any oral history program is only the first step in a long process: the inevitable effort of comparison of sources, the necessary critical question about them and the work of interpretation and reading by the professional historian. It is under only these conditions that we can talk about a historical work, which approximates the true facts, and can help us to understand them. Speaking about that time, the Moroccan historian Abdelahad Sebti said, I quote from memory, that the nation was not only in need to know, but also, and above all, to understand. And it is for professional historians to help it do so.

It is for this reason also that the IER refused, after much discussion again and despite the large amount of available data, to deliver a comprehensive reading of the historical period falling within its remit. However, it deemed that it was its duty to help set the stage for helping to write this history.

After having taking since the early weeks of its creation specific measures to ensure the organization of its own archives, the IER issued in its final report several recommendations in the field, including the adoption of a modern policy on archives, the creation of an institute for contemporary history and a national museum of history, etc.

Since then, a Royal Institute for History of Morocco was set up, a working group composed of Moroccan pioneering historians was created by the Advisory Council on Human Rights (CCDH), an archive law was passed by the former parliament and a EU mission of experts works in collaboration with the CCDH to establish the terms for a strategic partnership between the European Commission and Morocco in the field. What has been done is both much and few, given the immensity of the task to carry out in the future.

The adoption of a perfect law is only the first step in a modern policy on archives and hence a rigorous process of writing contemporary history. In addition to the necessary implementing decrees, there should be a mobilization of financial and human resources to undertake a review of archives (including good practices), to think of necessary trainings, mainly those of archivists, and to establish the real-estate program, and so on.

These are the issues that the national debate should address.

Translated by Khalid Ramli from a French article by Driss El Yazami, CCDH member and former IER member