The Spring of Dignity coalition has strongly condemned the recent knife attack on a 25-year-old woman by her ex-husband in public in Taza. The assault sparked outrage on social media under the hashtag #JusticeforImane, after the victim sustained severe injuries to her face and hand, leaving her with lasting physical and psychological scars and requiring 130 stitches. In a statement released Friday, the coalition of associations recalled that the young woman had previously been raped by the same man, resulting in a pregnancy. «She was pressured to marry her rapist out of fear of scandal and to secure recognition of her child's paternity. However, this marriage did not end her suffering», the statement explained. The coalition also denounced the «repeated physical and verbal abuse», that eventually pushed her to seek a divorce, stressing that this case illustrates once again «the alarming rise of violence against women, an affront to their dignity and a blatant violation of their rights». The coalition is calling for Imane to receive both medical and psychological support, while criticizing the «limited recourse to justice due to complex procedures, difficulty accessing courts, and lack of fairness», compounded by what it describes as the leniency of sentences in such cases. At the same time, it renewed its appeal for «a radical and comprehensive reform of the Penal Code, the decriminalization of medical abortion, and its integration into the Public Health Code, in line with World Health Organization (WHO) standards to ensure it is accessible to women at risk». The coalition also called for a revision of Law 103.13 on combating violence against women. In the same vein, Spring of Dignity urged the revision of Law 43.22 on alternative sentencing to explicitly exclude crimes of physical and sexual violence against women. It further recommended barring the possibility of amicable settlements in such cases, along with «a comprehensive reform of the Family Code that fully upholds women's dignity and the best interests of the child».
