1955 -
Activist, writer, and former political prisoner.
Fatna el-Bouih was born in Benahmed in Settat province. In 1971 she received a scholarship to a prestigious Casablanca girls' high school, Lycée Chawqi, where she became active in the national union of high school students (Syndicat National des Elèves). She was first arrested as a leader of the 24 January 1974 high school student strike. After her second arrest she was forcibly held from May to November 1977 in Derb Moulay Cherif in Casablanca with other women activists, including Latifa Jababdi, Ouidad Baouab, Khadija Boukhari, and Maria Zouini. They were later kept in Meknes Prison from 1977 to 1979 without trial. Bouih was charged with conspiracy against state security for membership in the illegal Marxist-Leninist group March 23 and for distributing political tracts and posters. She completed her sentence at Kenitra Civil Prison (1980 - 1982).
Bouih began to speak actively in 1991 as a member of the council for women's groups (al-Majlis al-Watani lil-Tansiq). These groups worked to change the mudawana with the Union d'Action Feminine (UAF), whose president is Latifa Jababdi, whom Bouih knew from March 23. Since 1995 Bouih has volunteered at Morocco's first center for battered women. She began writing about other women political prisoners, feeling that their stories should be part of Moroccan history. She wrote a book, A Woman Named Rachid, while in prison, but waited twenty years before publishing it. Her ability to publish this book in French and Arabic indicates a new openness since the end of the Hassan II era.
Bouih ran unsuccessfully in 1997 for councilor (mustashara) of Casablanca as a candidate of the Organization of Democratic and Popular Action (OADP), an official political party and successor to the March 23 group. She and her husband were founding members of the Moroccan Observatory of Prisons (OMP) in 1999. They work to help prisoners reintegrate into society. She finished a degree in sociology, and has been teaching Arabic since 1982 as part of her civil service.
Bibliography
Slymovics, Susan. "This Time I Choose When to Leave: An Interview with Fatna El Bouih." Morocco in Transition, Middle East Report 218 (spring 2001): 42 - 43.
— MARIA F. CURTIS
