PROTEST

5 ‘Unemployed Graduates’ Self-Immolate in Morocco

To reflect the movement of the “unemployed graduates.”

Five Moroccan men set themselves on fire Wednesday in Rabat, the nation’s capital, to protest the scarcity of job opportunities for university graduates, sending at least three to the hospital. The city has been a hotbed of civil unrest as the government reacts to a movement of “unemployed graduates” who have butted heads with police across the country. Morocco’s unemployment rate is 9.1 percent nationally, but reportedly jumps to about 16 percent for graduates. Self-immolation as a protest tactic has spread in North Africa since a Tunisian man lit himself on fire in December 2010 to bring attention to police harassment.