ensured; what the percentage of women was in elected office and in public employment; and under what circumstances citizens could lose their civil and political rights. 73. In reply, the representative said that equal access of women and members of religious minorities to public office was guaranteed by the Constitution. Normally, recruitment to public service was by competitive examination in which the principle of the equality of the sexes was observed. Women were permitted to join the armed forces but had to perform civilian tasks. Fourteen per cent of those elected in the communal elections of 1983 were women, but no woman had been elected in the legislative elections of 1984 since traditional attitudes did not yet favour the election of women to such an office. The deprivation of civil and political rights was a legal penalty lasting 2 to 10 years and was intended to prevent persons unworthy of public confidence from being employed in the public service or in education and from exercising activities of trust or from representing the people in parliament. Eights of persons belonging; to minorities 74. Concerning that issue, members of the Committee asked whether there were any ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities in Morocco, and if so, how the enjoyment of their rights under the Covenant was ensured; what minorities other than religious minorities existed; what facilities such minorities enjoyed with regard to the use of their own language and access by their children to schools where instruction was given in that language; and what rights the Berber people enjoyed with regard to protection of their language. 75. In reply, the representative stated that there were no problems in Moroccco regarding ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities. The Jewish community was not considered a minority since it lived in symbiosis with the rest of Moroccan society. The Berbers were completely integrated with the rest of the population. Foreigners living in Morocco were free to open schools if they so wished. Concluding observations by individual members 76. Members of the Committee expressed their appreciation for the willingness of the delegation of the State party to engage in a dialogue with the Committee and noted that a number of positive developments had occurred. Among those were the release of a number of political prisoners, improvement of the human rights situation of the Oufkir family, the adoption of the new bill on preventive detention, decentralization of the administrative tribunals, the liberal attitude towards the Jewish community and the improvement of the position of women in Moroccan society. 77. However, members of the Committee expressed their continuing concern with regard to arbitrary arrests, disappearances, conditions of imprisonment, the existence of unacknowledged prisons, the sometimes excessive length of detention, problems relating to the independence of the judiciary and to the application of certain aspects of article 14 of the Covenant, notably the preparation of a defence and the burden of proof, the suppression of political and cultural activities in universities and other restrictions in the field of freedom of expression, such as not allowing criticism of Moroccan institutions or the monarchy, treatment of the Western Saharans and the difficult position -17-