Royal Censorship in Morocco

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a Moroccan court's decision to jail and fine blogger and journalist Mohamed Erraji for failing to respect the king.

The court, convicted Erraji in a closed trial and sentenced him to two years imprisonment and a fine of 5,000 dinars (US$626), according to his family and local news reports. Erraji is a contributor to HesPress, a Moroccan daily news Web site.

The trial lasted for about 10 minutes, and Erraji did not have a defense lawyer, HesPress reported. His family said they are looking for a lawyer and plan to appeal to the court's decision.

This is another unfortunate milestone in the decline of press freedom in Morocco, which once had a reputation for an independent press, CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney said. Mohamed Erraji was convicted after a 10-minute, closed-door hearing without a defense attorney. This is a farce. We call for this conviction to be overturned.

On September 3, Erraji published an article on HesPress criticizing King Mohamed VI for rewarding people who praise him. In the article, Erraji wrote: We need to admit that what has destroyed our country and made it plummet to this embarrassing level in all international rankings, is this economy of dispersing gratuities, which benefits the lucky sons and daughters of this country and overlooks the rest.

A Moroccan youngster, aged 18, has been jailed for insulting the king, after replacing the monarch's name with that of his favourite football club.

He altered the phrase God, The Nation, The King on the school blackboard to read God, The Nation, Barcelona.

FC Barcelona says it has appointed a lawyer to look into whether they can help the boy, within the framework of Moroccan law.

The family of the boy, Yassine Belassal, is appealing against the ruling, and his father told the BBC he was preparing to write a letter to King Mohamed VI asking for a royal pardon.

An internet campaign is also under way to have Belassel freed.

Update: Unappealing Result

13th November 2008. Based on article from amnesty.org

The Marrakesh Court of Appeals in Morocco has upheld a lower court's guilty verdict against an 18-year-old student for insulting the King. Yassin Bellasal was sentenced to a one-year suspended prison term and a fine of 1,000 dirhams (approximately US$115).

Amnesty International said that the verdict serves to confirm that the monarchy remains a taboo topic in Morocco and shed a different light on the image projected by the Moroccan authorities of a state, where respect for human rights has greatly improved.

Two Moroccan magazines have been banned for publishing an opinion poll of the King in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of his rule.

All issues of Arabic-language weekly magazine Nichane and its French-language sister publication Telquel were seized by the Interior Ministry.

The Interior Ministry ordered the seizure of the issues of Telquel and Nichane following the printing of articles that violate the law, the ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

The seized issue of Telquel featured King Mohammed VI on its cover with the words The People Judge Their King emblazoned on his image.

The magazine conducted an opinion poll asking readers what they thought of the last ten years of King Mohammed VI's rule, and the results were overwhelmingly positive.

The poll showed that 91% of Moroccans are satisfied or very satisfied with the king's performance.

An editor of Telquel told French media that authorities told the magazine it was unacceptable in principle”to publish an opinion poll about the king, which is why the issues were seized.

Rights organization Reporters Without Borders said that while there have been significant improvements in press freedom in the past ten years, extreme censorship is still prevalent.  In the past ten years, according to the organization, Moroccan journalists have been sentenced to a total of 25 years in jail and news organizations have been fined a total of 2.8 million dollars.

The fundamental problem is this, a popular blogger Larbi wrote: In Morocco the king governs, he is the head of state, and the chief executive. But at the same time he is a sacred person. So whoever wants to talk about Moroccan politics finds himself in this dilemma: how do you speak about the actions of a head of state that presides over the destiny of 30 million Moroccans when the law punishes those who speak of, and violate his sacredness?

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the closure of a Moroccan independent daily amid an escalating government campaign to silence critical journalists.

On Tuesday, police prevented Taoufik Bouachrine, managing publisher and editor of the daily Akhbar al-Youm, and dozens of staff members from entering the offices of the Casablanca-based newspaper.

The sudden move followed a statement from the Ministry of the Interior accusing the independent daily of blatant disrespect to a member of the royal family for publishing in its September 26-27 weekend edition a cartoon on a strictly private wedding ceremony organized by the royal family. Prince Moulay Ismail, the cousin of King Mohamed VI, was married in a ceremony that, though private, had generated considerable interest and coverage in local newspapers.

Police detained and interrogated Bouachrine and cartoonist Khaled Kadar for more than 24 hours on Tuesday and Wednesday in Casablanca, lawyers told CPJ. Lawyers told CPJ that the allegations against Akhbar al-Youm are groundless and that the Ministry of the Interior has no legal authority to shutter a newspaper unilaterally. Article 77 of the Moroccan Press Law goes only so far as to authorize the ministry to ban a single issue of a periodical deemed disrespectful to the royal family.

We urge King Mohamed VI to order an immediate end to the arbitrary siege of Akhbar al-Youm and to immediately back the right of our colleagues to do their job without police or judicial harassment, said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, CPJ's Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. The time has come for a regime that constantly pays lip service to democracy to turn the page on abusing the law to settle scores with critical journalists.

Blatant disrespect to a member of the royal family

Based on article from map.ma

The cartoon, published September 26-27, 2009 by the daily, is a blatant disrespect to a member of the royal family, said a statement by the Ministry on Monday.

In addition to tendentiously using the national flag, the cartoon undermines a symbol of the Nation by insulting the emblem of the Kingdom, the statement said, adding that the use of the Star of David in the cartoon raises many questions on the insinuations of the people behind it and suggests flagrant anti-Semitic penchants.

In light of the elements at hand, the Interior Minister has decided, in accordance with the laws in force, to sue and seize the daily, and to take the appropriate measures concerning the paper's equipment and premises, the document said.

In the same vein, Prince Moulay Ismail has decided to take legal action concerning this issue.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) strongly condemns the decision of a Rabat court to imprison the managing editor of Al-Michaal newspaper for one year.

A Rabat misdemeanor court sentenced Driss Chahtan to a year in jail and Al-Michaal journalists Mostafa Hiran and Rashid Mahameed to three months in prison and a 5,000 dirham (US$655) fine each for intentionally publishing false information in a number of articles about King Mohamed VI's health, local journalists told CPJ.

The paper's lawyers walked out of the hearing on October 8 to protest procedural violations and the court's failure to abide by basic standards for a fair trial, they said.

Immediately after the court ruling, around two dozen policemen stormed the Casablanca-based offices of Al-Michaal and arrested Chahtan, journalists told CPJ. Lahbib Mohamed Haji, one of the newspaper's lawyers told CPJ that the arrest violated the country's penal code, saying that the public prosecutor had no legal basis to request the imprisonment after the court issued its decision.

Haji said he has appealed the ruling. Neither Hiran nor Mahameed have been detained.

These jail terms are part of a disturbing trend of repression of critical journalism in Morocco, said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney. The government has failed to keep its repeated promise to reform restrictive press legislation and a politicized judiciary. We call on the appeals court to overturn these convictions. Meanwhile our colleague should be released on bail.

Update: Banned

21st November 2009. See article from indexoncensorship.org

Moroccan newspaper Al-Michaal was banned on 13 November after editor in chief Driss Chahtan was sentenced to one year in prison and a 10,000 dirham fine as punishment for his articles about the health of King Mohamed VI.

On Sept. 28, 2009, the government ordered Akbar el Youm silenced, shuttered its offices in Casablanca, and posted policemen at its entrance to prevent any of the newspaper's 70 employees from reaching their desks.

The reason? This cartoon by Khalid Gueddar, published on Sept. 26:

It's Moulay Ismail on his nuptial truss, says the line in Arabic. Moulay Ismail is a cousin of Mohammed VI. He got married to a German woman recently. The faintly Hitlerean pose of the cartoon is gratuitous and vulgar. The Moroccan ministry of the interior didn't like the cartoon. It called it anti-Semitic for the way it portrayed the Moroccan star apparently as a Star of David.

The ministry then displayed its own anti-Semitism when it charged that the depiction of the national star as a Star of David was an outrage to the flag. The cartoon, the ministry charged, also lacked respect for the royal family--which, in Morocco, must be respected more than humor, truth or justice, as the cartoon case proved: Khaled Gueddar and his editor, Toufik Bouachrine, now face three to five years in prison. Moulay Ismail, the nuptialized prince, is claiming $400,000 in damages.

Morocco blocked distribution of an edition of leading Spanish daily newspaper El Pais after it reprinted cartoons deemed disrespectful to the royal family, the newspaper said. Morocco also blocked distribution of editions of the French newspaper Le Monde over the cartoons.

Moroccan authorities accused the newspapers of attacking the monarchy with the publication of the cartoons.

One of the cartoons is by Le Monde's star cartoonist Plantu and it depicts a hand reaching out of a Moroccan flag to create a child-like drawing of a funny face wearing a crown.

The other is by Moroccan caricaturist Khalid Gueddar and it alludes to the 25 September wedding of Prince Moulay Ismail, a cousin of King Mohammed VI, to a German convert to Islam.

The Federation of Journalist Associations in Spain said it deplored the distribution ban slapped on El Pais, saying in a statement it was regrettable that the Moroccan ministry of communication had opted for censorship.

The closure of the daring magazine Le Journal Hebdomadaire is a sign of renewed authoritarianism in Morocco

Last Thursday, I learned from the man behind Le Journal, Abou Bakr Jamai, that bailiffs had come to the magazine's office, just as its journalists were putting the final touches on a new issue, to seize its assets. A series of crippling libel fines and debts to the tax authorities had driven it to bankruptcy. We can already officially announce the death of Le Journal, Jamai told me. I was shaken to learn that no more issues of Le Journal would appear, although not surprised. It had become clear for several years that the palace – whether the king himself or his coterie of advisers – had given up on trying to co-opt or intimidate the magazine, as it has done with many other publications, and would sooner or later succeed in pushing it into oblivion by economic means.

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Morocco's top Arabic-language weekly Nichane has closed after a board meeting of its shareholders.

The magazine's large circulation should have made it a prime advertising outlet. Yet Nichane has suffered a persistent advertising boycott campaign initiated by the royally-owned ONA/SNI group, the largest corporation in Morocco, and eventually followed by major companies linked to the regime.

The closure of Nichane raises troubling questions about Morocco's commitment to press freedom. The thousands upon thousands of Moroccan readers who made Nichane a best-seller have now been deprived of a unique source of independent reporting.

The magazine, founded in 2006 as a modernist and secular media outlet published in local Moroccan Arabic, has been praised in Morocco and abroad for its daring taboo-tackling cover stories. These include: The King's cult of personality, Sex and homosexuality in Islamic culture, Morocco, #1 marijuana producer in the world, Inside Moroccan secret services, How Moroccans joke about Islam, sex and the monarchy., and more.

Yet because of its often critical positions towards the regime, Nichane – along with TelQuel, its French-language sister publication – was from its inception targeted by a large advertising boycott campaign. That campaign intensified after September 2009 when the government censored publication of an opinion poll on King Mohammed VI (another first, in Morocco and the entire Arab World) published by Nichane, TelQuel and the French daily Le Monde.

Many of Morocco's major companies are owned by the royal family, by the government, or by moguls closely connected to the regime. Because of political pressure and a boycott campaign launched by royal ONA/SNI group, many of these companies in various economic sectors (e.g., banking, telecommunications, real estate, air transportation) over time began to remove TelQuel Group publications from their advertising purchases.

On Monday, a court in the Moroccan city of Taza sentenced 24 year-old student Abdelsamad Haydour to 3 years in jail and a fine of USD 1,200 for criticizing the king of Morocco in a video posted on YouTube. According to the official state news agency, Haydour is accused of attacking the sacred values of the nation.

According to one Moroccan news website Haydour had no legal assistance during the hearing and the Court did not appoint a lawyer to defend the accused in accordance with the Moroccan law.

Under Moroccan law the king is considered inviolable. But the Moroccan constitution also guarantees (Article 25) freedom of thought, opinion and expression in all its forms.

The incriminating four-minute clip was posted in early January, during a week of social unrest and violent clashes between demonstrators and anti-riot police in the unemployement-stricken city of Taza. In the video, Abdelsamad Haydour is seen talking to a group of people in the street, harshly criticizing the king and his entourage.

Morocco has banned the distribution of Thursday's edition of Spain's El Pais newspaper, as a cartoon published by the newspaper allegedly tarnished King Mohammed VI's name.

The decision to ban (the paper) was made on the basis of article 29 of the press code that protects the monarch, a senior communication ministry official told AFP: The caricature contains a deliberate intention to smear the (king's) image to harm the king personally.

The cartoon, which was picked up by a Moroccan website, accompanied an article by Spanish journalist Ignacio Cembrero. Contacted by AFP, Cembrero said the Moroccan reaction surprised him as the small cartoon was friendly and rather likeable.

The International Publishers Association is speaking out after authorities in Morocco banned the Spanish-language daily newspaper El Pai's from distributing its February 26 issue because of an excerpt it featured from the French book Le Roi predateur (The Predator King).

The book, written by Catherine Graciet and Eric Laurent, offers a critical look at the King of Morocco, and is being published in France by the French house Le Seuil.

The IPA is calling the cancelation of the paper in Morocco an act of censorship. IPA member Olivier Betourne, said:

By prohibiting the issue of the El Pais daily, which included excerpts of The Predator King, the Moroccan authorities go against the wind of freedom which is currently blowing in the MENA region. Not only does IPA condemn the censorship of the Spanish daily, it also urges Morocco to authorize the distribution in Morocco of The Predator King.