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Par: zakia laaroussi
At a time when a disconcerting ease is bent down, when we are racing in front of sensationalist titles, cities are flogged with cheap headlines, reduced to clichés that betray their deep reality. This is the tragic fate that Ben Ahmed, ancestral Moroccan village, suddenly designated as synonymous with crime, experienced, while his historic benchmarks, his culture and the dignity of its inhabitants have been relegated in the shadows.
A crime, as abominable as it is, cannot define a city, nor erase its history. Admittedly, Ben Ahmed – or more specifically the Mzab region – was the theater, at the end of April, of a vile act which upset public opinion. And if the company is entitled to demand justice, it is intolerable to reduce a whole city to a punctual anomaly. Because even more serious than the crime itself was the way in which the media and the social platforms seized it. Overnight, Ben Ahmed was no longer perceived as an old tribal home, nor as a center of agricultural and cultural effervescence, but as a simple macabre decor shaped by a disturbed individual who represents only himself.
How was a region rich in its identity-from Mzab to Chaouia-could it be transformed into a media dump? No ! A thousand times no! Ben Ahmed is the beating heart of Mzab tribes, rooted in the deep humus of history. She still lives to the rhythm of her Sufi zaouïas, her venerable sanctuary of Sidi Omar, and her firmly woven social traditions. It is a city of tranquility, agriculture, human authenticity, and noble art of L3alwa ”. How, then, could so much wealth be reduced to a single bloody scene?
What perverse logic has an isolated criminal incident the mirror of an entire region? Why don’t we look at Ben Ahmed’s other face: his fertile fields, his popular markets, his harmonious cohabitation, his innate rural hospitality? Why do we dismiss all these light images to rely on the worst-this worst which, however, can arise anywhere on this planet?
We are faced with a sensation press, a speech that strips the cities of their honor. The national media, as are thousands of “content creators”, have once again sold to the temptation of the spectacular. Without trying to understand the context, without questioning the reality of the village, without offering a lucid word – they were satisfied with a “black staging”. As if Ben Ahmed was born from the crime.
Result: we mark the city of a blood which is not his, we cover it with a sinister veil, as if its inhabitants were accomplices of an act which they have neither committed nor wanted.
Ben Ahmed cries: “We are not murderers … We are the children of this land. This cry is not only a denunciation of media injustice; It is a request for moral repair. No one denies the atrocity of the crime, but no one can tolerate that a whole region carries the burden. The sons of Ben Ahmed – teachers, farmers, intellectuals, notable – deserve respect, not humiliation. The city bleeds from an injury imposed by a press that sees only blood.
Each city, each village can experience a drama. But true justice does not reside in generalization or in stigma. We ask the national media and digital voices to show restraint and equity, to seek objectivity rather than emotion, and to remember that beyond the name “Ben Ahmed”, these are thousands of worthy stories that are still waiting to be told.
Enough contempt.
Enough deformation.
Enough trade with the misfortunes of others.
Ben Ahmed will remain, despite everything, a land of history, agriculture, spirituality and purity.
And that those who want to know it really go there …
Rather than reducing it to a bloody scene in a viral video.
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