More attacks on the Moroccan press
Something I thought I'd never see: a Moroccan court convicts a newspaper for printing an article and a cartoon insulting to Algerian President Abdel Aziz Bouteflika. This is the just the latest in what's starting to look like a systematic attack on one of the freest press in the Arab world:
Morocco’s press code provides an arsenal of repressive tools, including terms of imprisonment for vaguely defined speech offenses such as “undermining” the institution of the monarchy, Islam or the country’s “territorial integrity,” and “insulting” the king, foreign heads of state or diplomats. Judges can also send journalists to prison for defaming others or for publishing false information “that disturbs the public order.”Surely the press should be rewarded for attacking our scheming Algerian cousins?
The newsweekly currently facing the heaviest pressure today is Le Journal Hebdomadaire (“The Weekly Journal”), which may have to close if forced to pay a record 3.1 million dirham (U.S.$356,500) libel judgment that an appeals court confirmed last month after an unfair trial. The court said Le Journal had libeled the Brussels-based think tank, the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, when it characterized the center’s recent report on the Western Sahara as so pro-Moroccan that Moroccan authorities could well have ordered and paid for it.
The amounts awarded in recent libel judgments against Le Journal and its competitor, TelQuel (“Such As”), suggest that the courts see the defamation complaints as an opportunity to punish these weeklies for their insistent questioning of government policies. While recognizing the right of defamed parties to seek reparations in court, Human Rights Watch noted that the courts did not bother to show how the damages they set corresponded to any harm actually suffered.
In February, Le Journal came under further pressure through angry demonstrations against the newsweekly, which public authorities helped to orchestrate and state television then covered favorably. These demonstrations, fueled by false accusations that Le Journal had reprinted the notorious cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that first appeared in a Danish newspaper, were an ominous development in a country that had earned a reputation for having one of the region’s freest presses.
In addition, today the appeals court confirmed the conviction and punishment of al-Mash`al weekly for an article and caricature deemed “insulting” to Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. A lower court in February convicted al-Ayyam (“The Days”) of publishing “false information” in an article about the royal harem under previous Moroccan monarchs. Al-Ousbou`iyya al-Jadida (“The New Weekly”) is facing a trial for “undermining the monarchy” because it published an interview in which Nadia Yassine, a Moroccan Islamist also on trial for the same charge, said the institution of the monarchy was ill-suited to the country.