Warnings for the independent press

"A gigantic blunder" , "grotesque" , "ridiculous in the extreme" - such were the reactions of the press at the end of April to the prosecution of Ali Lmrabet, editor of the French-language weekly Demain Magazine and the Arabic-language weekly Douman, on charges that include "insulting the person of the king" for which he faces three to five years in prison under the new press law. Lmrabet assumed the authorities could go no further than this in their harassment. But he had underestimated their determination to silence him. In early May, he learned that his printers were no longer willing to print his two newspapers. The Moroccan press has blossomed since the late 1990s, especially during the final years of the reign of the late King Hassan II. Government opponents of all kinds have been able to express themselves in the opinion pages of a range of independent newspapers, which have gradually broken taboos, turned political reporting and analysis into an everyday topic, and stolen readers from the now ailing political party organs. But the new outspokenness has alarmed the country's rulers. As early as two years ago, in an interview in July 2001 for the London-based, Arabic-language newspaper Al Sharq Al Awsat, King Mohammed VI voiced his concerns: "Of course I am in favour of press freedom. But I would like this freedom to be a responsible one... Journalists aren't angels, after all. Personally, I appreciate the role of critic played by the Moroccan press and journalists in public debate. But let's avoid giving in to the temptation of the imported model. Otherwise our own values will be undermined and individual freedoms will be jeopardised... The law sets limits... It must apply to everyone. When the press speaks of human rights, it sometimes forgets to respect those rights itself." In the view of Khalid Jamaï, an editorial writer for the Le Journal Hebdomadaire and a contributor to the daily L'Indépendant, Morocco's political parties do not yet fulfill the role of a proper opposition and the independent newspapers fill the gap. "So the government sees them as opponents, as parties, as rivals and even as enemies." Lmrabet's case illustrates the problems facing independent newspapers now - the lack of independent courts, the difficulty of tackling such sensitive issues as the person of the king, a law that maintains prison sentences for press offences, growing interference by state security agents, advertising boycotts and pressure on advertisers and printers. A Reporters Without Borders representative went to Morocco (to Casablanca and Rabat) from 22 to 27 April, meeting with journalists, writers, human rights activists and lawyers. The representative asked to speak with officials in the communication and justice ministries and the Directorate of Territorial Security (DST) but was only received by senior officials in the communication ministry. There were no restrictions on her movements and she was able to meet with people freely. 1. The emergence of an independent press Article 9 of the Moroccan constitution, which was amended in 1992, says "freedom of opinion, freedom of expression in all its forms" are guaranteed. King Hassan's decision in July 1994 to repeal a "dahir" (royal decree) which had helped to gag the press since 1935, and then his decision to decree a general amnesty constituted a first step towards a freer press. Tired of the political party organs, the only press available since the 1960s, Moroccans turned to the independent press with the democratic opening of the 1990s. New newspapers appeared, such as Le Journal, Demain Magazine or Assahifa, and won many readers. "For the first time, Moroccans were enjoying a degree of freedom that had no comparison with the past," said Hassan Nejmi, Rabat bureau chief of the daily Al Ittihad Al Ichtiraki (the newspaper of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces - USFP). Journalists seized on the new opportunity to create bold, sometimes irreverent publications such as Demain Magazine and Douman, which introduced caricature and satire. Nonetheless, the readership is much smaller than in other countries of northern Africa. All the Moroccan print media combined sell only 350,000 copies a day, compared with 500,000 in Tunisia, 1.3 million in Algeria and 2.2 million in Egypt. Morocco has 641 publications (including around 20 daily newspapers) and 1,800 journalists. "These figures are very low for a country that aspires to turn itself into a democracy," acknowledged communication minister Nabil Benabdallah. 2. Prosecuted for "insulting the person of the king" Abdelmoumen Dilami, the owner of the printing works Ecoprint, told Ali Lmrabet on 2 May that, because of pressure being put on him, he would have to stop printing the two satirical weeklies Lmrabet edits, Demain Magazine and Douman. "What would you want me to do? We are vulnerable. They use insidious methods," said Dilami, who has nonetheless promised to carry on printing the two weeklies until Lmrabet finds other printers. Lmrabet was due to appear in court on 7 May on charges of "insulting the person of the king", "offence against territorial integrity" and "offence against the monarchy." On 1 April, he was summoned for questioning by the Rabat investigative police at the behest of the royal prosecutor of the Rabat higher level court. He was interrogated for five hours about articles and cartoons that had appeared in recent months on such subjects as the annual allowance that parliament granted the royal family (detailed in a finance ministry document distributed to parliamentarians), a cartoon strip on the history of slavery and a photomontage of Moroccan political personalities. "Are you aware that you have harmed the sacred status of institutions?" Lmrabet was asked. They also questioned him about an interview with a Moroccan republican who advocated self-determination for Western Sahara, accusing him of "undermining Morocco's territorial integrity." As Lmrabet was about to fly from Rabat airport to Paris on 17 April, two agents from the DST, the government's main intelligence service, told him he was banned from leaving Morocco "on the instructions of the DST." When he asked if there was a court order to this effect, they said no. Government spokesman Nabil Benabdallah defended the ban the same day: "Ali Lmrabet is the subject of several lawsuits. This is a preventive measure by the investigative police to ensure that he is present at the trials." The trials he referred to concern 40 complaints brought against him by journalists with the Arabic-language daily Al Ahdate Al Maghribia over a cartoon in Demain Magazine on 11 May 2002 describing the daily as "pornographic." The spokesman added: "It wasn't the DST that took the decision but the DGSN, which is responsible for policing the borders. The DGSN acted at the request of the investigative police... I am not authorised to express a view on this subject, that's the job of the judicial authorities." The justice ministry said nothing and none of its staff was willing to be interviewed by Reporters Without Borders. "By forbidding Ali Lmrabet to leave the country, the authorities were not only judging him on his alleged intentions, they were usurping the role of the judiciary, which alone has the authorities to deprive him of his freedom of movement," said his lawyer Ahmed Benjelloun. The government spokesman announced at another press conference a week later that Lmrabet could after all leave the country. Aboubakr Jamaï, the editor of Le Journal Hebdomadaire, wrote in his editorial of 26 April: "Ali Lmrabet will be tried by judges whose career depends on the person who is responsible for prosecuting him... Lmrabet will have to defend himself before judges whose professional career depends on the High Council for the Judiciary, of which the president is none other than the king. How can one think that Ali Lmrabet will have a fair trial?" Lmrabet is adamant that, "a decision to press this kind of prosecution could not have been taken without the king's endorsement." Lmrabet was already convicted and sentenced by a high-level court in Rabat in November 2001 to four months in prison and a fine of 30,000 dirhams (3,000 euros) for "publishing false information jeopardising or likely to jeopardise public order." A report in Demain Magazine headlined: "Skhirat palace reportedly up for sale," published on 20 October 2001, was described by the prosecutor as a "tissue of false information and utterly mendacious allegations." In Lmrabet's view, the real reason for this earlier prosecution was his reporting on Moulay Hicham, the king's cousin, and the publication in the issue of 27 October 2001 of advance extracts from a book on Morocco, entitled "The Last King," by Le Monde journalist Jean-Pierre Tuquoi. 3. The "security" and their methods The press can these days write about, criticise and even caricature Hamidou Laânigri, the head of the Directorate of Territorial Security (DST), Morocco's most important intelligence agency. This was unthinkable in the time of Driss Basri, King Hassan's interior minister. But some areas of the DST's activities are still sensitive. The "security services" do not want the press probing these areas, and they do not hesitate to make it known. Maria Moukrim, a journalist with the Arabic-language weekly Al Ayyam, received a threatening call on her mobile telephone as she was leaving her office in Casablanca on 13 March: "I'd never before been insulted like this. The caller referred to my report about a secret detention centre that appeared in Al Ayyam. He said I could have a car accident if I carried on writing this kind of story." When Moukrim asked her caller to identify himself, he replied: "We are the ones you had the nerve to criticise in your article." He then told her where she was at that moment, in the street near a taxi. A young man suddenly struck her with a blunt object, injuring her left hand. She then received another call from the same person asking if she had learned her lesson. Moukrim had written an article in January on a secret detention centre in the Rabat suburb of Témara. It is called the "green prison" because of the colour of the faces of those who have been tortured there. She was not able to visit the centre, but she spoke to people who had been detained there and to people who lived nearby. Why did the DST wait two months before expressing its displeasure? "We don't know," said Al Ayyam managing editor Nordine Miftah. "No doubt it is a way of telling us they still have their eye on us, that they never forget." Moukrim was shocked by the incident and filed a complaint against persons unknown, but does not expect anything will result. Ali Amar, the publisher of Le Journal Hebdomadaire, and one of his journalists, Mouaad Rhandy, were detained by Moroccan police for three hours on 23 October 2002 at the frontier with Ceuta (one of the two Spanish enclaves in northern Morocco). There were taken to an office of the investigative police where they were handed a summons for questioning in the Zahidi case. They were then questioned about the case by DST agents. Amar and Rhandy had published an interview on 19 October with Moulay Zine Zahidi, the former head of a bank, the Crédit Immobilier et Hôtelier (CIH), now on the run. The interview contained revelations about the way the bank was run (which had already been the subject of a parliamentary investigation) and pointed the finger at several political leaders. "They searched our car from top to bottom. They ripped out the seats and they took our mobile telephone, our files and our camera," Amar said. The management of the Arabic-language daily Al Ahdate Al Maghribia told one of its journalists, Latifa Boussaâdan, on 15 October 2002 that she was being fired for "gross misconduct" because she allegedly sent a photograph of Gen. Laânigri, the DST chief, by e-mail to Demain Magazine. Boussaâdan denies the charge. The shot of Laânigri was taken at a cabinet meeting earlier that month by one of the daily's photographers. Surprised at being photographed, Laânigri had ordered the photographer not to publish it, threatening him in the presence of witnesses. The newspaper respected the general's "wish," said Boussaâdan, who believes he was behind her dismissal. She said editor in chief Abdelkrim Lemrani asked her: "Why did you send that photo of Laânigri? Don't you know we are on excellent terms with him? And don't you know that, if he wants, he could open a file on you?" Boussaâdan said she thought her refusal to follow the example of most of her colleagues and file a complaint against Lmrabet was also part of the motive for her dismissal. The newspaper, for its part, denies pressuring its journalists to bring complaints against Lmrabet. The DST has for several years had its sights on the Islamist movement Al-Adl Wal Ihsane, led by Sheikh Yassine. Issue No. 34 of Rissalat Al Foutouwa, a weekly that supports the movement, was seized by the authorities on 6 April 2001 without any explanation although its editor, Mohamed Aghnaj, possesses a stamped form dated February 1999 permitting its publication. The newspaper had previously been confiscated without explanation on several occasions in 2000. In 2001, "the authorities put a lot of pressure on printers and distributers to prevent the newspaper coming out," the editor said. No. 35/36 was also seized on the night of 22 May 2001 from the premises of the distributing company. Subsequently, several printers told the newspaper's staff they could not print it on the orders of the head of the DST chief Laânigri. The staff managed to keep printing and distributing by using Al-Adl Wal Ihsan's network of activists. But activists were thereafter arrested on several occasions as they distributed copies outside mosques. Finally, the staff suspended publication and today the newspaper is under a de facto ban. "The security use so-called 'independent' newspapers for their own purposes," said Hassan Nejmi, president of the Union of Moroccan Writers and a journalist with the daily Al Ittihad Al Ichtiraki. "Some, like Al Ahdate Al Maghribia, are used to attack leading civil society figures who annoy. Others, such as Le Matin du Sahara, are used to convey official views. The distribution of tasks is clear." Nejmi himself has been the target of a campaign of insults in the columns of Al Ahdate Al Maghribia. Mohamed Brini, the editor of Al Ahdate Al Maghribia, denies being in the government's pay. Tailing and telephone tapping are also standard DST practice, many journalists say. 4. Still sensitive subjects - The king and the royal family "The person of the king is inviolable and sacred," according to article 23 of the Moroccan constitution. "The Moroccan political system has a name, the makhzen, and the king is its cornerstone," says Ahmed Benchemsi, editor of the weekly Tel Quel. "Not being free to include him in an analysis leads straight to schizophrenia: you write one thing but think the opposite. You choose a number of scapegoats... whom you rail at all the more furiously because you are forbidden to mention the palace, the most important political actor in this country." As printing of the latest issue of Le Journal Hebdomadaire got under way on 30 November 2002, plain-clothes police arrived at the printing works: "Police, stop everything. We have orders to stop the printing and distribution of the newspaper. What do you mean by 'King and God'?" The headline of the newspaper's front-page lead was: "The King and God, return to the regime's religious roots." After five hours of telephone calls with the printers and the distributors, the issue was finally given the go-ahead to appear. The police never showed any written order. The 7 March 2002 issue of the French weekly VSD was not sold on the streets of Morocco. It was not released by Sochepresse, the company responsible for its distribution. VSD asked the authorities for an explanation but received no answer. The issue had a report headlined "The man who did not want to be king" that offered a candid portrait of Mohammed VI and a critical assessment of the first three years of his reign, referring to two controversial books about Morocco: "Our friend the king" by Gilles Perrault (1990) and "The last king" by Jean-Pierre Tuquoi (2001). The French daily Libération is usually sold on stands the next day in Morocco, but the issue of 22 January 2002 was held back by the distributing company, Sochepresse. It had a story headlined "Moulay Rachid: the very costly vacation of the King of Morocco's brother" about a stay in an Acapulco hotel that cost 10,200 dollars a day (11, 547 euros at the then rate). The report said the king's brother "rented the imperial suite of the luxury Quinta Real hotel and 24 other rooms" and was "accompanied by 16 people including three beautiful models." The distributor Sochepresse also held back the 31 October 2001 issue of the French weekly Le Canard enchaîné, which had a piece about Tuquoi's book "The last king." The report said: "In two and a half years on the throne, (King Hassan's) son has done little except crack down on the press, give in to the Islamists on women's rights, manage his immense fortune and practice sport." - Prince Moulay Hicham The king's cousin, Prince Moulay Hicham, is nowadays in disgrace and is rarely mentioned in the political party newspapers. If independent newspapers quote him, they do so at their risk. Plain-clothes police seized 8,000 copes of issue No. 15 of the Arabic-language quarterly Wijhat Nadhar from the Najah printing works in Casablanca on 6 May. "No justification" was given for the seizure, said the quarterly's editor, Abdellatif Hosni. The issue included the translation of a lecture Prince Moulay Hicham gave in May 2001 at the French Institute for International Relations in Paris in which the prince, then living in the United States, said the Moroccan monarchy needed to be "reformed." - Western Sahara The issue of Western Sahara (annexed by Morocco) has to be treated with the utmost care. The least deviation from the official line may be sanctioned. Hence, for example, the charge against Ali Lmrabet of "jeopardising territorial integrity" for just publishing extracts of an interview with Moroccan republican Abdallah Zaâzaâ, in which Zaâzaâ voiced support for "the self-determination of the Saharawi people." Lmrabet had even gone to the trouble of removing some passages from the interview, which originally appeared in the Spanish daily Avui. Ignacio Cembrero, a reporter with the Spanish daily El País, was tailed on 8 and 9 March 2002 after arriving in Rabat the day before to write about Western Sahara. Without offering any explanation, the Moroccan authorities banned distribution of issue No. 1528 of the Spanish weekly Cambio 16, dated 19 March 2001. It had a story headlined "Sahara prepares for war" in which reporter Rocio Castrillo wrote that, "an army of 30,000 soldiers... is preparing to confront the Moroccan invader," and quoted a Polisario Front official, Brahim Ghali, as criticising "the intransigent and colonial will of Morocco's expansionist regime." - The Islamists The September 2002 legislative elections were marked by the sizable vote polled by the Islamists. The authorities had previously betrayed nervousness about this prospect. For example, Al Ayyam editor Nordine Miftah received a call while in Agadir on 16 August 2002 from a police superintendent asking him to come "at once" to Casablanca. There he was interrogated for several hours about an interview with an Islamist leader, Abdallah el Chadli, that had appeared on 11 July 2002. The journalist who conducted the interview, Anas Mezzour, was summoned for the same reason two days later and was questioned for nearly five hours. Mezzour had already run ran afoul of the authorities on 7 January 2002, when he, a lawyer and a member of a local humanitarian organisation together visited Islamists held in the main prison of Kénitra. As they were about to leave the prison at the end of the afternoon, they were arrested by a group of individuals in civilian dress. Mezzour was taken to the office of the prison governor, where a man he recognized as a security service agent overpowered him and snatched his tape-recorder. He was then held for three hours and was only allowed to go after the prison governor called the local prosecutor. - Ahmed "Bziz" Sanoussi Satirist Ahmed "Bziz" Sanoussi has been banned from national TV and radio in Morocco for more than 10 years. "When I ask senior officials about the ban, they reply that the decision to censor me was taken 'up there'," Bziz said. He was interviewed by the public television channel 2M during demonstrations against the war in Iraq in March but the interview was never screened. The transmission of an Al-Jazeera report containing an interview with Bziz was also blocked (see below). This was regrettable because "the present ruling class is excellent raw material for caricature and satire," said Bziz. 5. A press law and anti-terrorist bill that violate freedoms The UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Abid Hussain, called on all governments on 18 January 2000 "to ensure that press crimes are no longer subject to prison sentences except for crimes such as racist or discriminatory comments or appeals for violence." He added that the imposition of a prison sentence for the peaceful expression of opinion "constitutes a serious violation of human rights." Nonetheless, press offences were made punishable by prison terms in no less than 20 articles of Law No. 77-00 of 3 October 2002, which amends and adds to Dahir No. 1-58-378 of 15 November 1958. Several journalists have been sentenced to prison terms in the past two years. On 14 February 2002, the Casablanca appeal court gave Le Journal Hebdomadaire publisher Aboubakr Jamaï a three-month suspended sentence and Ali Amar, the managing editor, a two-month suspended sentence. They were convicted of libel for a series of reports in the newspaper (which was banned at the end of 2000) criticising the way ambassador Mohammed Benaissa bought a house in Washington in 1996 on Morocco's behalf. The new press law also maintains the provision for the seizure of publications without a court order. According to article 77, the interior minister can order the seizure a newspaper likely to "disturb the peace." It was on the basis of this provision, which already existed in the 1958 press law, that the weeklies Le Journal, Assahifa and Demain were banned at the end of 2000. There are positive aspects to the new press law such as lighter punishments, smaller fines, less red tape for starting up a publication and the need to justify confiscations. But it maintains prison sentences of three to five years for defaming the king, princes and princesses (albeit less than the five to 20 years in the 1958 law). And it appends to this article the provision that: "The same sentences apply when the publication of a newspaper or piece of writing constitute an offence to Islam, the monarchy or territorial integrity." Lmrabet is being prosecuted under these sections of the law, whose terms lend themselves to broad interpretation. Article 29 reaffirms the government's right to ban Moroccan or foreign newspapers if they are "likely to pose a danger to Islam, the monarchic institution, territorial integrity or public order." Largely because of his criticism of this law, National Moroccan Press Union secretary-general Younès Moujahid was fired from his job as a journalist with the daily Al Ittihad Al Ichtiraki by its editor, Abderrahmane Youssoufi, who was then also prime minister. In the view of Khalid Jamaï, an editorialist with Le Journal Hebdomadaire, "this press law reflects the government's indecision, moving forward in one area, moving back in another." The draft anti-terrorist law or "Laânigri law" An anti-terrorist bill submitted to parliament at the start of 2003 sparked a civil society outcry. Le Journal Hebdomadaire commented on 25 January: "The justice, interior and foreign ministries are just the underlings in this project, hired hands who busily tailored a respectable costume specially for the DST, to legalize what the DST already does, which is to kidnap people, shut them away, deprive them of all legal aid, and cut them off from all means of communication." The newspaper added: "This bill, when is passes all its exams, will just end up giving the DST an additional weapon which it didn't particularly need." It is paragraph 12 of the bill's first article that is particularly worrying for press freedom. It says that "propaganda, publicity or defence of an act constituting a terrorist offence" is itself to be considered a terrorist act. The concept of "publicity" is so vague that it could be construed to mean any report or article about an act of terrorism. Some hold that, by allowing arbitrary interpretation, it puts journalists at the mercy of the authorities and thereby limits their freedom. It is worth noting that the bill was submitted to parliament shortly after several newspapers carried reports about such DST abuses as the secret detention at the start of 2003 of Islamists accused of terrorism. As a result of pressure from human rights organisations, the government withdrew the bill in mid-April so that it could be amended. Nonetheless, several journalists told Reporters Without Borders they doubted that the contentious sections will have been removed when it is resubmitted. 6. Surveillance of foreign press Some foreign reporters, such as Ignacio Cembrero of the Spanish daily El País, are out of favour in Morocco. After being followed in March 2002, he was again followed on 1 October 2002 for several hours in Casablanca by four persons he identified as members of the DST. Cembrero thought this was meant to signal displeasure with the meeting he had the day before with former interior minister Driss Basri at his home near Rabat. British freelance journalist Nicolas Pelham was "banned from entering the country" without any explanation when he arrived at Tangier's Ibn Battuta airport on 22 January 2002. After being held overnight in the airport terminal, he was flown at dawn to Casablanca and put on a flight for London via Madrid. He had come to do a report on emigration for the BBC. "Al-Jazeera continues do its news-gathering work freely," communication minister Nabil Benabdallah said in a statement, much to the annoyance of the pan-Arab TV news network's correspondent in Morocco, Iqbal Ilhami. "Free to work? What's the good of preparing a report if I cannot broadcast it?" she protested. The origin of this friction was an incident on 30 March, when Ilhami covered a demonstration against the war in Iraq, interviewing a government minister and the banned satirist Bziz. After preparing her report, Ilhami went to the headquarters of the Moroccan state-owned radio and TV broadcaster RTM to send it via satellite to Doha, the capital of Qatar, where Al-Jazeera has its headquarters. Al-Jazeera has an agreement with RTM for this service. But on 30 March, Ilhami waited in vain for her report to be sent. At first, an RTM employee claimed that he had not received a required fax from Doha. So Ilhami contacted the communication minister, Benabdallah, who said he did not know what had happened and promised to find out. A few hours later, Ilhami called the minister again. This time, he confirmed that the report had been censored and said he took responsibility. "You must be more cooperative with us and you must guarantee that in future there willbe no more reports that threaten public order," he said. "They hadn't appreciated it when, previously, we showed Moroccans burning an American flag," Ilhami said. "I had been told then that Fouad Ali Al Himma (the minister delegate to Interior) was unhappy. That didn't happen at the second demonstration." Communication ministry officials defended RTM's decision on the grounds that Al-Jazeera had already allegedly broadcast several "false reports" which it "had not deigned to correct." Reporters Without Borders was given a copy of a fax sent by the US embassy in Morocco to the Maghreb Arabe Presse (MAP), the official news agency, saying that the embassy had remained open, contrary to what Al-Jazeera had reported. The communication minister's statement said Al-Jazeera could always use a private company to send its reports to Doha by satellite. But several persons told Reporters Without Borders there are no private companies with this capability in Morocco. This means Al-Jazeera is subject to de facto censorship. The French daily Le Monde was to have begun printing all its locally-sold copies in Morocco on 14 April. The newspaper had been negotiating with the authorities for months so that a Morocco edition could be printed by Ecoprint, the company that prints the daily L'Economiste. But the decision needed a ministerial decree. The date of the planned launch was also set aside for the start of a series of reports by Stephen Smith on Morocco in the newspaper's "Horizon" section. Why did local printing of Le Monde not start on 14 April? The Moroccan authorities complained that the newspaper sent out invitation cards before the decree had been issued. But some Moroccan journalists saw the delay as a warning to Le Monde, which is known for not sparing the Moroccan regime in its reports. 7. Other forms of pressure: advertising and subsidies The emergence of new publications has made the advertising market more competitive, but it is the editorial line of each publication that seems to influence advertisers' preferences as much as circulation, especially as Morocco has no entity that independently verifies circulation figures. In 2002, the Arabic-language weekly Al Ayyam ran an interview with lawyer and human rights activist Abderrahim Berrada on the front page with a headline that said the king should apologise for the mistakes of the past. While the newspaper was being printed, editor Nordine Miftah received a call from an advertiser who said: "Either you change your front page or I withdraw my advertisement." How did the advertiser know what was on the front page unless he was tipped off by someone in the printing works? The editor did not budge, and he lost the advertiser. The advertising revenue of Mediatrust (the group that publishes Le Journal Hebdomadaire and Assahifa Ousbouiya) fell by 80 per cent from 2000 to 2002. "There was an obvious boycott of our publications," said Le Journal Hebdomadaire editor Ali Amar. "Some companies such as Maroc Telecom and Royal Air Maroc received instructions to stop giving us advertising. Others chose to boycott us because they did not want to be associated with our editorial line." Lmrabet, for his part, lost all his advertising long ago, and after knocking on the doors of many advertisers, he realised there was no point trying to get it back. The late King Hassan's interior minister, Driss Basri, established a system of subsidies for the newspapers of the political parties represented in parliament. This was later extended to some of the newer, independent newspapers such as Al Ahdate Al Maghribia. "We get a subsidy because we are Morocco's biggest-circulation newspaper and our accounts are transparent," said Tahar Meddoun, the head of the Al Ahdate Al Maghribia printing works. Some journalists nonetheless maintain that editorial line is the main criteria in awarding subsidies. "Sure, the political party newspapers get help from the state, but the real gift for them is not being asked to pay what they owe the banks," explained journalist Khalid Jamaï. "If they had to pay, many newspapers would go bankrupt." Here again, the rules are not the same for everyone. Ali Amar of Le Journal Hebdomadaire said: "We were the first newspaper to get squeezed, while other newspapers with millions of dirhams in debts were able to get their payments rescheduled over several years." National Moroccan Press Union secretary-general Younès Moujahid denounced both these practices and other, even more questionable methods of financing: "Some newspapers survive without advertising or any other (visible) income. How do you think they manage? It's the (security) services who pay them." Conclusion "We would like to reiterate our firm resolve to consolidate press freedom, preserve news diversity and ensure the modernisation of this sector, which is one of the pillars of our project for a modernised, democratic society," King Mohammed said on 15 November 2002. The Moroccan press is without a doubt nowadays one of the freest in the Arab world, especially since the end of King Hassan's reign. In recent years, independent newspapers have broken many taboos and exposed many scandals such as the participation of the Moroccan left in the 1972 coup attempt against King Hassan, cases of corruption implicating political personalities and the lack of transparency in the September 2002 legislative elections. These revelations have ruffled feathers, as has the emergence of satire and caricature in the print media. Often displeased by their outspokenness, the regime has reacted in different ways to rein in the enthusiasm of the new generation of journalists: sometimes head-on, banning three weeklies at the end of 2000, sometimes indirectly, by means of pressure on advertisers and printers. It has also used its legislative armoury, as in the case of Lmrabet. Hassan Nejmi, president of the Union of Moroccan Writers, believes that: "There two forces currently in play. On the one side, the security service people think Moroccans just need one thing, the stick. They are completely allergic to press freedom. On the other side, there are those who think you shouldn't cling to old reflexes. They support civil society and the independent press." The authorities, of course, deny wanting to restrict freedom of expression. "It's a mistake to say there is a desire to stifle press freedom," said Khalil Idrissi, chief of staff at the communication ministry. The reforms announced by his ministry in April are a proof of this, he said. They include broadcasting reform, raising standards in the print media, and developing the advertising industry. Who is behind the censorship in Morocco? The king? The interior minister? The communication minister? The justice minister? The head of the DST? It is sometimes hard to say who is responsible. It would an exaggeration to say that there is a government plan to gag the independent press. But the harassment of journalists in the courts, the coercive legislation and the low blows against certain journalists are worrying signs. Recommendations Reporters Without Borders recommends that the Moroccan authorities should: - amend Law No. 77-00 of 3 October 2002 . so that press offences are no longer punishable by prison terms, as required by the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. On 18 January 2000, the rapporteur called on all governments "to ensure that press crimes are no longer subject to prison sentences except for crimes such as racist or discriminatory comments or appeals for violence." He said the imposition of a prison sentence for the peaceful expression of opinion "constitutes a serious violation of human rights." . so that in the second part of article 41, the terms "offence to Islam, the monarchy or territorial integrity" are precisely defined, as they lend themselves to broad interpretation. - define more precisely the terms of paragraph 12 of article 1 of the anti-terrorist bill, especially the references to "propaganda" and "publicity" of an act constituting a terrorist offence. - ensure that telephone tapping is not carried without the authorisation of an investigating judge. - ensure that government subsidies and advertising, and the advertising of state agencies and parastatal entities are assigned to newspapers in full transparency, above all on the basis of circulation. - put an end to the de facto ban on Rissalat Al Foutouwa et Al-Jazira. Reporters Without Borders recommends that the European Union should: - intervene with the Moroccan authorities to ensure that they respect article 2 of the association agreement between the European Union and Morocco. This articles says: "Respect for the democratic principles and fundamental human rights established by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights shall inspire the domestic and external policies of the Community and of Morocco and shall constitute an essential element of this agreement."