On 18 March 1964 approximately 50 Moroccan students broke into the embassy of

Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to ...

in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

and staged an all‐day

sit-in A sit-in or sit-down is a form of direct action that involves one or more people occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change. The protestors gather conspicuously in a space or building, refusing to mo ...

protesting against death sentences handed down by a Moroccan court in

Rabat Rabat (, also , ; ar, الرِّبَاط, er-Ribât; ber, ⵕⵕⴱⴰⵟ, ṛṛbaṭ) is the capital city of Morocco and the country's seventh largest city with an urban population of approximately 580,000 (2014) and a metropolitan populati ...

four days earlier. The death sentences concerned 11 people who allegedly attempted to assassinate Moroccan King

Hassan II Hassan, Hasan, Hassane, Haasana, Hassaan, Asan, Hassun, Hasun, Hassen, Hasson or Hasani may refer to: People * Hassan (given name), Arabic given name and a list of people with that given name *Hassan (surname), Arabic, Jewish, Irish, and Scotti ...

. Soviet authorities complied with the embassy's request to ignore

extraterritoriality In international law, extraterritoriality is the state of being exempted from the jurisdiction of local law, usually as the result of diplomatic negotiations. Historically, this primarily applied to individuals, as jurisdiction was usually cla ...

and remove the students by force, but later ignored the Moroccan ambassador's demand to punish the students.

Protest

The students forced their way into the embassy, which was then located on Moscow's Gorki Street (now

Tverskaya Street Tverskaya Street ( rus, Тверская улица, p=tvʲɪrˈskajə ˈulʲɪt͡sə), known between 1935 and 1990 as Gorky Street (russian: улица Горького), is the main radial street in Moscow. The street runs Northwest from th ...

), and occupied a wing of the building. The protesters carried placards demanding the immediate release of the convicted men. They said they would stay until 10 a.m. 19 March combining sit-in with a

hunger strike A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke a feeling of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most ...

. In the evening five officials from the Soviet Ministry of Education tried to persuade the students to abandon the demands. To the chagrin of authorities in Morocco, the embassy eventually asked the Soviet government to ignore extraterritoriality and storm the building to remove the students by force. Soviet authorities complied with the request. However, later, when the Moroccan ambassador asked that the students lose their stipends and be expelled from the Soviet Union, the Soviet government quietly shifted all the stipends to public organizations’ accounts, and replied that it had no jurisdiction over these organizations’ scholarships.

References

{{reflist Moscow protest 1964 in Moscow Moscow protest Diplomatic incidents Morocco–Soviet Union relations Student protests in Russia Protests in the Soviet Union Moscow protest Protests in Russia