Moroccan poet
Saida Menebhi |
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| Born | 1952 (1952)
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| Died | December 11, 1977(1977-12-11) (aged 24–25)
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| Cause of death | hunger strike |
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Saida Menebhi (1952 in Marrakesh – 11 December 1977 in Casablanca) was a Moroccan poet, high school teacher, and activist with the Marxist revolutionary movement Ila al-Amam. In 1975, she, together with five other members of the movement, was sentenced for seven years of imprisonment for anti-state activity. On November 8, 1977, inside the jail in Casablanca, she participated in a collective hunger strike, and died on the 35th day of the strike at Avicenne Hospital.[1][2]
Her poetry, collected and published first in 1978, and later again in 2000, is considered a prime example of Moroccan revolutionary and feminist literature. She wrote in French. Translations of a selection of her poems to English were published for the first time in 2021 by See Red Press.[3]
Abduction
On January 16, 1976, Saida Menebhi was abducted and detained—along with 3 other female militants, Rabea Ftouh, Piera di Maggio and Fatima Oukacha—in the secret Moulay Sherif Prison in Casablanca, now known as a prominent center of torture in the period of King Hassan II.[4] There, they were subjected to a number of different kinds of physical and psychological torture before being transferred to the civilian prison in Casablanca.[5] Menebhi and her comrades Fatima Oukacha and Rabea Ftouh were sentenced to indefinite[citation needed] solitary confinement in the civilian prison of Casablanca.[6][5]
