The Freedom From Religion Foundation will be joining an international action on Sunday, March 8, to demand the release of a prisoner of conscience being held in a Moroccan prison.

The state/church watchdog is holding a protest at the Moroccan Consulate, 1601 21st St. NW, Washington, D.C., to spotlight the imprisonment of feminist and freethinker Ibtissame “Betty” Lachgar. Other protests will be held around the world, such as one in London at the Moroccan Embassy there.

Lachgar, a Moroccan clinical psychologist, atheist, feminist and longtime human rights campaigner, was found guilty last fall of wearing a T-shirt that “insulted Islam” and was sentenced to 30 months in prison. She is being treated inhumanely, even being denied a mattress and a pillow. Making her release urgent is the fact that Lachgar is a bone cancer survivor who was scheduled at the time of her arrest last August to have surgery on a failing prosthesis in her left arm. She’s been warned that without that surgery, she risks amputation of her arm.

Lachgar never wore the T-shirt in question on Moroccan soil, but a photograph on social media spurred her arrest. She put on the T-shirt, saying “Allah is lesbian,” in London in 2022 to protest the execution of two lesbians by the Iranian government.

“What better time than a Sunday to protest blasphemy laws?” asks FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “And what better date to take a stand to help a feminist than on March 8 — International Women’s Day?”

Gaylor and FFRF Co-President Dan Barker, based in Wisconsin, and FFRF’s D.C.-based Governmental Affairs Director Mark Dann, will attend the protest and have invited area FFRF members to join them. To dramatize Lachgar’s medical situation, protesters are encouraged to wear a white sling on their left arm with FREEBETTY.ORG in red or black lettering or to display white paper doves as symbols of freedom.

FFRF is part of the Free Betty Coalition, which includes 150 organizations around the world. Internationally renowned groups, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have taken up Lachgar’s cause. A petition demanding her release has now surpassed 380,000 signatures.

Lachgar has been named FFRF’s 2026 Avijit Roy Courage Awardee, and its advocacy arm, FFRF Action Fund, has released an action alert to place pressure on the U.S. Embassy in Morocco to advocate on Lachgar’s behalf.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With more than 41,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

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