Forced to marry the man who had\u00a0raped\u00a0her, a 16-year-old\u00a0Moroccan\u00a0girl committed suicide last month. She had been raped by another minor in the northern port city of Tetouan. As Abdel Ali El-Allawi, director of the local chapter of an international NGO, the\u00a0Moroccan Association of Human Rights\u00a0(AMDH), \u00a0said to\u00a0Al Jazeera, the\u00a0rapist was first put into prison but that his family \u201centered negotiations with the family of the victim\u201d and proposed that their son marry the teenager; her family assented.<\/p>\n
Under Article 475 of the Moroccan Penal Code, rapists who marry their victims can be exonerated from their crime.\u00a0He\u00a0cannot be prosecuted\u00a0unless the woman is able to obtain a divorce, a situation that is highly unlikely as, under Moroccan law, the decision of a judge authorizing such a marriage cannot be reversed.<\/p>\n
Pressure to repeal the law rose last year after the\u00a0suicide of 16-year-old Amina Filali, who killed herself with rat poison after she had been\u00a0forced to marry her rapist who was ten years older\u00a0than her. She had also been regularly beaten by her husband and mistreated by his family, whom she lived with after being married. After her suicide, her rapist was summoned by the police and then released.<\/p>\n
Khadija Riyadi, president of the\u00a0Moroccan Association for Human Rights,\u00a0explains\u00a0that a woman who loses her virginity is considered unmarriageable and\u00a0guilty of dishonoring her family, even if she was raped.<\/p>\n
Last year, women\u2019s rights groups like\u00a0Mouvement Alternatif pour les Libert\u00e9s Individuelles\u00a0(MALI) and women\u2019s rights activists\u00a0demonstrated\u00a0and demanded that Article 475 be repealed. The calls to do so spread beyond Morocco, with a\u00a0Twitter hashtag #RIPAmina\u00a0calling for Article 475 to be eliminated.<\/p>\n