Press freedom organisation Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF – Reporters without Borders) criticised the Moroccan authorities on Wednesday for stifling independent media, as a newspaper editor, accused of insulting King Mohammed VI, was due to go on trial.
Ali Lamrabet, editor of satirical weeklies Demain Magazine and Doumane, is also charged with undermining the integrity of Morocco’s territory, in a case that RSF said ”summarises the problems facing independent newspapers” in the country.
Its report said problems included ”the lack of independence of the judiciary, the difficulty of tackling sensitive subjects such as the monarch, the increasing intervention of so-called security services” and political pressure on publishers and printers.
RSF’s findings are based on a fact-finding mission to the country last month by one of its representatives, who spoke to Moroccan journalists and officials.
”The journalists spoke of being followed, having their phones tapped and receiving threats,” RSF said.
Lamrabet faces up to five years in prison and a fine if convicted on the accusations, which relate to an article on the king’s civil list, a cartoon on Morocco’s ”history of slavery” and extracts from a Spanish newspaper’s interview with a republican ilitant, all published in Lamrabet’s French-language Demain and Arab-language Doumane newspapers.
However, RSF also stressed in its report that the level of press freedom in Morocco was among the most advanced in the Arab world, adding that ”to say that the authorities have a strategy of muzzling the press would be an exaggeration”. -Sapa-AFP