Morocco: freedoms of the press under attack

AHMED TAIBI

10/30/09

The Moroccan government’s unremitting onset against freedoms of the press and of expression has been gaining momentum recently. After the arrest of Idriss Chahtane, the managing editor of the weekly Al Michaal, and the sentencing of Rachid Mhamid and Mustapha Hirane, two journalists working for the same weekly, the gavel struck again in the case of Ali Anouzla, the managing editor of Al Jarida Al Oula, and Bouchra Eddou, a journalist of the same daily. Both journalists were handed suspended jail terms of a year and three months respectively. Sentencing of Tawfik Bouachrine, the publishing director of Akhbar Al-Yaoum, and Khalid Kadar, a caricaturist for the same paper, was postponed till October 30th. A jail sentence, it seems, will soon constitute a required journalistic credential to establish the bona fides of Moroccan independent journalists and activist bloggers who write in defense of democratic principles in Morocco.

The French newspaper Le Monde and its corresponding Spanish one El Pais were banned in Morocco for publishing caricatures by Jean Plantu lampooning the Moroccan royal family. Khalid Naceri, in justifying the banning to the Spanish Agency for International Information, labeled the caricatures irreverent to the monarchic institution. The government’s tendency to apotheosize the royal family is rather disturbing and creates an environment that is hostile to the permanence of democratic ideas.

The shamelessness of the Moroccan government’s dictatorial policies against the independent media is even more contrasted now that the French and Spanish governments have opted to respect the rights of Le Monde and El Pais to free expression. Indeed, one has to ponder the Moroccan government’s emerging political praxis of distressing the country’s national institutions and citizens to ingratiate itself with foreign organizations and regimes so as to promote its recreant foreign policy. A Moroccan court of law, at the behest of the Moroccan government, amerced Le Journal Hebdomadaire with the ludicrous fine of 250,000 Euros for an alleged libel on the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center (ESISC), a Belgian think tank. Some suspect the government’s litigation against Le Journal was motivated by the fact that ESISC’s president, Claude Moniquet, a staunch advocate of Israeli tactics in Gaza and the West Bank, has supported, through his editorials, Morocco’s position on “Western Sahara;” In a similar fashion, Al Jarida Al Oula, Al Ahdat Al Maghribia et Al Massae were put in the dock for supposedly defaming libya’s dictator by calling him a …dictator. They were ordered to pay 99,000 Euros each.

Such practices created significant strains between the government and the independent media. Based on comments left on a number of online Moroccan newspapers, the Moroccan people consider their current government disastrously unprepared for the advance of democracy. Indeed, our inchoate and paranoid government is run by men who did not suffer the crucible of Hassan II’s regime, but strengthened it, moralized it, rationalized it the same way they are today rationalizing their repressive actions against the independent media and Moroccan’s right to express their views on the leadership. The strategy they have conceived and orchestrate has lowered the standards of free speech and pluralism and is inching the country to a post Hassan II nadir.



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Comments (3)  

 

0 #1 Good article and the caricature is even better lol — Kamal Feriali 2009-10-30 10:56

lol I still don't get it. Why is the Moroccan makhzen is still bent on a type of dumb censorship which they know will painfully boomerang? It's amazing how many sarcastic caricatures of the makhzen I have seen virally propagate web-wide since the clampdown on that innoncent Akhbar Al-Yaoum caricature.

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0 #2 COMMENT_TITLE_R E Morocco: freedoms of the press under attack — Ash-lah 2009-11-04 12:57

The lack of sense of humour , and the Makhzen's reaction to the caricature is an indication of a fragile leadership in Morocco.

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0 #3 !!!!!!????????? ?? — Marwan 2009-11-04 14:13

Our beloved country is going back warded to the era of lead, oppression and No freedoms…Maghze n mentality will eventually disappear one day when Moroccans can not handle the heat and oppression anymore…that makes me so sad, I have nothing to show for if a foreigner asks me about my native land except “ food and nature”!!!! Absolutely nothing…

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