Ljubljana receives first Guest Writer

Zineb El Rhazoui is a journalist, writer and a human rights advocate from Morocco where she has been active in the pro-democracy movement.

El Rhazoui is a co-founder of the Alternative Movement for Individual Liberties (MALI movement) that became known for the oique-nique organized during Ramadan in 2009 in order to protest against the article of law that forbids eating in public. El Rhazoui is also member of the Freedom and Democracy Movement, better known as the 20th February Movement, that strives for a real democracy in Morocco.

As a graduate with a degree in the Sociology of Religion, she published several articles on religious minorities and the Marabout cult in the journal hebdomadaire, a pioneer of the independent press in Morocco, that the regime banned in January 2010. She was deprived of her freedom of speech and received serious threats as a result.

Today El Rhazoui lives in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, which became a City of Refuge earlier this year. Zineb El Rhazoui has recently published chapters in two books, Les 1000 unes de Charlie Hebdo (Ed. Les échappés) and Nouvelles du Maroc to which she contributed a political short story "Ahmed le businessman" (Coll. Miniatures, Ed. Magellan)