Reporters Without Borders visits Morocco, evaluates situation

At a press conference in Casablanca on 6 April at the end of a visit to Morocco, Reporters Without Borders said it had noted “positive changes” but called on the authorities to remove the obstacles still constraining press freedom. Represented by its secretary-general, Robert Ménard, and the head of its Middle East and Northern Africa desk, Lynn Tehini, the organisation welcomed the fact that for the first time in 20 years it had been able to meet a member of the government, communication minister and government spokesman Nabil Benabdellah. “This meeting has ended the dialogue of the deaf that prevailed until now and signals a change in attitude on the part of the government,” Ménard said. The barriers were being pulled back and there was now a readiness to talk calmly and freely, but many problems remained. “Reporters Without Borders and the government do not share the same view of the reality of press freedom in Morocco,” he said. Responding to the many criticisms of the position Reporters Without Borders gave Morocco in its annual ranking of countries by their respect for press freedom - 119th out of 164 countries - Ménard said: “You are free to disagree but your cannot claim there was no credible basis for the ranking, as more than 50 carefully-chosen criteria were used.” The questions used were available to the public, he added. A bad press law “Morocco is evolving but the laws pose a problem - the press law is a bad law and we think it must be changed radically,” Ménard said, calling for the repeal of around 20 of its articles that still provide for prison sentences. “Regardless of their shortcomings, punishing journalists in this way is an anomaly in any country that wants to be a democracy, and even if prison sentences are applied less and less, they are a permanent threat hanging over the Moroccan press,” he said. This did not mean the articles punishing defamation had to be eliminated or that journalists would be free to question a person's integrity without having good grounds for doing so. The law must be clear, Ménard, said, referring to article 42 of the press law which banned many things but was so vaguely worded that it lent itself to all kinds of interpretations. “The laws are tricky things to handle, and one should resist the temptation to dig deep into the legislative arsenal to find grounds for convicting someone,” Ménard said, alluding to the case of the newspaper Al Ayyam, which was fined 100,000 DH (10,000 euros) and whose publisher was given a four-month suspended sentence for “publishing photos of the royal family without permission” under a 1956 dahir (royal decree). Ménard also criticised articles 12 and 20 of the press law which impose severe restrictions on foreign investment. A specialized court for the press Ménard said he had proposed the creation of a “court specialised in press matters” during his meeting with the communication minister. Such a court could help ensure betting understanding of the situation and better protection for journalists. It would also prevent the imposition of exorbitant fines and damages of the kind seen in several press cases in recent months, violating the rule of law that an punishment should be in proportion to the crime. Ending the broadcast monopolies Ménard said everyone rightly welcomed the opening up of broadcasting to the private sector that was currently under way, “but this does not solve the problem of public broadcasting, which is not sufficiently independent from the authorities.” He said he had met Fayçal Laraïchi, the head of Morocco's two public television stations, RTM and 2M, and he praised some of the things he had done. But Ménard condemned the action of 2M in distorting the facts and stirring up hostility prior to demonstrations outside the Casablanca headquarters of the newspaper Le Journal Hebdomadaire on 14 February over its supposed publication of the Mohammed cartoons. He called on the High Authority for Communication and Broadcasting (HACA) to look into this case and said it should regularly take up cases that pose problems. The case of Ali Lmrabet Ménard then referred to the case of journalist Ali Lmrabet, who has been banned from working as a journalist in Morocco for 10 years. The ban was archaic, Ménard said, adding: “What's more, banning an issue of the Spanish newspaper El Mundo from entering the country just because it had an article with the byline ‘Ali Lmrabet, correspondent in Morocco' was childish.” The king and the press Ménard deplored the fact that neither King Mohammed nor his father, King Hassan, had ever given an interview to the Moroccan press. “Does this mean the press is too inferior or that Moroccan journalists are subjects with no right to put questions to their monarch,” Ménard asked. “The king should break with these archaic customs and attitudes,” he added.