Attacks on the Press - Committee to Protect Journalists

attacks on the press in 2009middle east and north africa: moroccoOpenNet Initiative, an academic collaboration that studies online censorship,said the regime conducts selective filtering of online political content. In areport published in August 2009, OpenNet also noted that “a number of independentand pro-opposition Web sites were found to be sporadically hacked anddefaced, and their content replaced with pro-Libyan leader content.” Blogs werefew in number and tended to focus on culture and literature rather than politics,OpenNet said.The Libyan League for Human Rights offered an important reminder of theregime’s brutally repressive history. On World Press Freedom Day, the organizationreleased a list of reporters who had been murdered or who had disappearedover the past four decades. The list of “journalists who lost their lives for ethicallydoing their job” included Daif al-Gahzal al-Shuhaibi. His disfigured body wasfound in the suburbs of Benghazi on June 2, 2005, about two weeks after he wasreported missing, according to several sources. A former state media employee,he had recently begun writing online articles describing official corruption. Todate, no credible and transparent inquiry into al-Ghazal’s death has been conducted.In July 2007, news reports quoted al-Ghazal’s family as saying that aTripoli court sentenced three unidentified men to death for the murder. But independentjournalists noted that no official details were ever released about thesupposed prosecution, and that al-Ghazal’s family might have been pressured byauthorities to make their statement.MOROCCOAs king mohammed vi marked his first decade on the alawitethrone, his government moved aggressively to censor coverage of the royal familyand silence other critical news reporting, fueling deep concern about the future ofindependent journalism in this North African nation.Reporting even positive news about the 46-year-old monarch, portrayed asliberal-minded in 1999 when he succeeded his father, King Hassan II, promptedretaliation. On August 1, authorities destroyed more than 100,000 copiesof Nichane, an Arabic-language weekly, and Tel Quel, its French-language sister,both of which carried a public opinion poll in which 91 percent of respondentssaid they viewed the king favorably. Three days later, the government banned anissue of the French daily Le Monde that also carried the poll results. “Conductinga survey, the main focus of which is to ask the citizens to give their thoughts onthe king’s actions is in itself a violation of the principles and the foundation ofthe royal system,” Minister of Communication Khalid Naciri told reporters. “InMorocco, the monarchy cannot be the object of a debate, even through a survey.”Critical scrutiny of the royal family has been effectively criminalized. Thenotorious 2002 Press Law allows the government to ban local or foreign papersfound to “harm Islam, the monarchy, territorial integrity, or public order.” Twentysixseparate articles call for prison penalties for journalistic activities consideredoffensive, but insulting the royal family is especially risky, with potential punishmentof three to five years in prison. Under the constitution, the king is “sacredand inviolable.”Authorities used those legal tools to obstruct and delay distribution of theJuly 15 issue of Le Monde, and to ban the July 9-15 issue of the French weeklyLe Courrier International, news reports said. Le Monde carried an opinion pieceby Aboubakr Jamaï, former editor of the critical Moroccan weekly Le JournalHebdomadaire, in which he characterized the king’s press policy as a “war againstindependent journalism.” The banned issue of Le Courrier International reprintedan article on the monarch’s personal wealth that initially ran in Le Journal Hebdomadaire.The piece was accompanied by an editorial cartoon calling MohammedVI “the richest king of the poor!”Questions about the king’s health were taboo. In October, a Rabat court sentencedDriss Chahtan, managing editor of the independent weekly Al-Michaal,to a year in jail for “publishing false information” about the health of MohammedVI during a period when the king had not been seen in public, local journaliststold CPJ. The court also sentenced Al-Michaal reporters Mostafa Hiran andRashid Mahameed to three months in prison in connection with the Septemberarticles, but they were not immediately taken into custody. Defense attorneystold CPJ that the trial did not meet basic fairness standards, notably in the court’srefusal to allow the defense to summon witnesses. The same month, a Rabatcourt convicted Managing Editor Ali Anouzla and reporter Bochra Daou of thedaily Al-Jarida al-Oula on similar “false information” charges in connection withstories on the king’s health. They were sentenced to suspended terms.In September, police shut down the Casablanca daily Akhbar al-Youm afterthe Ministry of the Interior accused the newspaper of showing “blatant disrespect”in publishing an editorial cartoon concerning a “strictly private weddingceremony organized by the royal family.” Prince Moulay Ismail, cousin of KingMohammed VI, was married in a ceremony that, though private, had generatedconsiderable public interest. On October 30, a Casablanca court sentenced TaoufikBouachrine, the paper’s publisher and editor, and cartoonist Khalid Gueddarto suspended jail sentences and monetary penalties for failing to show respect tothe royal family. The court also upheld the closing of the newspaper.Moroccan courts have often been used to settle scores with critical journalists,CPJ research shows. In its annual report released in June, the Moroccan Associationfor Human Rights said the courts were being used routinely to punish critical2282 2 9