Scores of women were among the crowd saying goodbye to an artist and human rights campaigner whose death has sent shockwaves rippling across Africa. French-Moroccan photographer Leila Alaoui was among the victims of the al-Qaeda attack on the Cappuccino Café in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
That so many women were among the estimated 1,000 people who attended her funeral in Marrakech, in defiance of local norms, is testament to Ms Alaoui’s rare ability to break down barriers between opposing worlds.
The 33-year-old was working for Amnesty International on a major project exploring women’s rights in Africa when she was killed by jihadists from the al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) group.Born in France, brought up in Morocco and trained in photography in New York, Ms Alaoui’s friends and family say she was fascinated by the idea of passing through the borders put up by people between countries, races, religions and genders.
Shot twice in the leg and chest, Ms Alaoui had recovered to a stable condition after surgery and was able to speak to her parents before, as a medical evacuation was being prepared, she suffered a fatal heart attack.
Her death, announced in a statement from Amnesty on Monday morning, saw the death toll from that attack rise to 30, as well as scores wounded. Ms Alaoui had been parked outside the Cappuccino Café with Amnesty employee and driver Mahamadi Ouedraogo, a father of four who was also killed.
After attacking the café, a popular destination among foreigners in the city, the gunmen took hostages in a nearby luxury hotel. The siege was broken on Saturday morning with the assistance of French anti-terror experts, and all four gunmen were shot dead.
As she died in a hospital in Burkina Faso, 3,000 miles away in Paris an exhibition of her last completed work The Moroccans was coming to the end of its showing at the prestigious Maison Européenne de la Photographie.
The exhibition featured life-size portraits of people from different communities across Morocco, and Ms Alaoui said the project was designed to counter the “tired exoticisation” of North Africa and the Arab world.
Speaking to The Independent after attending Ms Alaoui’s funeral on Wednesday, her cousin, Yalda Alaoui, said the artist was fast “becoming an icon” in her home country.
“She was representing Arab women in the art world, a visionary when it came to topics like immigration and women’s rights,” Yalda says.
“Demonstrations happened in her name today in Morocco and over 2,100 articles were written about her. The French parliament observed a minute of silence for her today too.
“However all this will not bring me back my closest cousin, who was like a sister to me. We were very similar, both physically and mentally.”
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