According to a Reuters report republished in The Guantanamo Blog, Ahmed Errachidi, a 41-year-old Moroccan, was freed without charge from Guantanamo last week, arrested upon entering Morocco and faced a judge on Wednesday upon suspicion of preparing and carrying out terrorist acts. The charges were dropped, and Errachidi, who suffers from bipolar disorder, was released to his family.

Errachidi spent more than five years at Guantanamo before being released without charge.

A survey conducted between December 2006 and January 2007 of four Muslim countries (one of which was Morocco) found that in all four countries, large majorities of the people believe that undermining Islam is a major goal of US foreign policy.  Additionally, most want US military forces out of the Middle East region and many surveyed would approve of attacks on those forces.

The survey was conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org, and the START consortium at the University of Maryland.  1,000 of the participants were Moroccan, from both rural and urban areas.

On average, 79% of all surveyed say they perceive the “weakening and division of the Islamic world” to be a US goal.  Approximately the same number of people perceive that the US is trying to maintain “control over the oil resources of the Middle East.”  64% on average believe that the US is trying to “spread Christianity in the region.”

Surprisingly, a majority of Moroccans support targeting US forces, even more so than Pakistanis or Indonesians surveyed.  Even more alarmingly, only 57% of the Moroccans surveyed believe that violence cannot be justified “at all” (against civilians).  An additional 19% said, however, that it can only be “weakly justified.”

To read more, visit WorldPublicOpinion.org

Great article on All Headline News on Morocco’s cannabis (kif/hashish) industry - what the author, Linda Young, doesn’t touch upon however, is alternative uses of the cannabis sativa plant. No surprise, considering the Moroccan government won’t go there either.

Although personally, I have nothing against marijuana/kif/hashish usage by responsible adults, I can understand what the government is trying to do - get in good with the EU. And while their need for doing so is somewhat unfortunate, it seems necessary.

Problem is, they’re going about cannabis eradication the wrong way. Case in point:

“It’s not a question of replacing cannabis with apples, vines or avocados. The question is replacing the incredibly dynamic economy of cannabis, with an equally dynamic economy - that is also legal,” Abdeslam Dahmane, from the development agency Targa, told BBC news. Dahmane works closely with the U.N. agency.

Precisely - taking away the cannabis plants will also take away what is clearly an enormous industry, both domestically and in terms of exports. So why not use the hemp for alternative purposes?

Yet another excellent article, from the Lebanese Daily Star, opines on Morocco’s seeming regression in freedom(s).  Journalist Anna Mahjar-Barducci highlights this year’s and last’s major events - the Nichane case, Aboubakr Jamai’s resignation - and then goes on to discuss a recent meeting she had with Andre Azoulay, who is a (Jewish) advisor to the king.

Mahjar-Barducci quotes Azoulay as saying, “Nowadays our religions are falling into the trap of fundamentalists.”

She then goes on to say, “The Moroccan government, by condemning Nichane and other publications, is merely doing a favor to Islamists, who cannot seem to laugh at jokes and who would not accept a Jew as an adviser. By condemning journalists, the government only deepens the gap between Morocco and modernity.”

Harsh words, but true - as much as one may disagree, Morocco’s only path to development is to leave the fundamentalists/-ism behind.

The “Benghazi Six”

According to the Focus News Agency, the Arab Maghreb Union is concerned over the European media campaign against Libya’s treatment of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of infecting over 400 children with the HIV virus in 1998. I say, shut up Arab Maghreb Union.

Since the initial sentencing of the “Benghazi Six,” there has been growing evidence that the HIV infection occurred because of unhygienic and outdated hospital practices. Can’t say I’m surprised - if Libyan hospitals are anything like Moroccan ones (and I venture that they’re probably worse), then there’s most likely no soap (even in private clinics here, that’s known to happen), and who knows their practice with needles (though I can assure you that needles in Morocco are new - at some hospitals, you have to go to the adjoining pharmacy and buy your packaged needle yourself).

My own speculation aside, there is also evidence that the nurses were tortured and even raped in order to get testimonies from them. The Sofia Weekly, a Bulgarian newspaper says that:

In the first trial, the judges set aside the scientific evidence in favor of a dramatic cloak-and-dagger scenario based on testimony by Libyans who said they had witnessed the nurses hoarding vials of HIV-infected blood; the testimony was bolstered by confessions that the nurses have since said were elicited by torture.

Nine Libyan security officers and a doctor were charged and later acquitted of torturing the nurses to extract confessions. How then, are their sentences still valid? At the end of last June, the Bulgarian nurses appealed on the basis of the acquitted security officers mistreatment but were rejected by the Libyan court. Then, the Bulgarian nurses were charged with slander because of their accusations against the Libyan officers.

Although the EU strongly opposes the behavior of the Libyan government in this case, they’ve dedicated 2.4 million Euros to HIV education and treatment of HIV-infected children in both Libya and the EU.

So now, the Arab Maghreb Union, according to Focus News Agency, “calls on all the countries, especially the European ones, to adopt a positive attitude to the case of the medics sentenced to death and the HIV infected children with a view to human and legal aspects of the issue, and lay aside any politization.”

Sure - let’s forget about the fact that Libya is mistreating foreign medical workers and just focus on the children. Let’s forget about justice and Libya’s outrageous human rights violations (and please, their lack of hygiene in hospitals which allowed 400 children to become HIV-infected in the first place certainly falls into that category) and “lay aside politization.”

Libyan news sources have been slandering the nurses and Bulgaria as well, as this article from Focus News demonstrates.

More information on the case can be found from the following sources:

Nature News - Outlines the scientific evidence which backs the medics

The Stanford Progressive - Excellent overview of the case

Sofia News Agency

In December, Hamza and I stopped at Zara, the popular retail store in Casablanca, after a trip to the Consulate.  After a bit of shoufing, we stepped outside, only to be greeted by a very small child with a case of gum.

As most of you know, and others of you might suspect, Morocco has lots of street kids - Magharebia.com estimates that there are about 25,000 in all of Morocco (although as one of my favorite bloggers pointed out, Chicago alone has that many).  Some of these kids, like the one I met above, are “employed,” making a living selling gum, candy, nuts, or other small things.  Others beg by mosques or on busy streets.  Still others get trapped in a life of glue-sniffing, alcohol abuse, or even prostitution.  A film put out a few years ago by Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch called Ali Zaoua, prince de la rue depicts the life of three such street children, one of whom left home to get away from his abusive prostitute mother.

I’ve become somewhat hardened to Meknes’ street kids.  Perhaps because there are about ten of them in Hamrya where I live, and I see them almost every day.  Some of them are terribly aggressive and try to grab the arms of passersby.  But this one particular child in Casa broke my heart for some reason.  We bought a pack of gum from him, then asked him his age.

“Six,” he said in French, “No, cinq.”

I turned to Hamza, “he’s so little!”

“So little!” The child mimicked.

Magharebia points out that groups such as The Moroccan Association for the Protection of Children in Danger (ADIM) and Shemsy are working to combat this problem, working to steer children away from abuse and reintegrate them into the educational system.  Other groups such as Bayti work with street children, working children, abandoned children, juvenile delinquent and sexually exploited children and has successfully reunited quite a few children with their families.

The biggest obstacles to the success of these programs are funding and public apathy.  As I mentioned the other day, a common belief amongst Moroccan youth is: “it’s the government’s responsibility.”  Even when speaking with students about specific programs such as Bayti, they claim “it can’t work.”  Others still (including a few very close friends) have said “Moroccans have their own problems.  It isn’t their job to take care of street kids when they can hardly afford to take care of their own kids.”

Despite all the complaints, however, the government is doing something. In Casablanca, paramedics patrol the streets to help children who need minor medical and psychological assistance.  Additionally, a new initiative in five major cities is a mobile unit dedicated to assisting these children.

So whose responsibility is it really?

Bayti puts it best: “The success of these efforts is contingent not only on financial support, but on a true partnership between the family, the school, the state, the NGO and the private sector.”

According to an annual report made today by Reporters Without Borders, “The hopes raised when Mohamed VI became king in 1999 have slowly disappeared and the country’s journalists face prosecution that severely affects their work, even though taboo subjects are now fewer.”

The article mentions the major breaches of free speech: the government’s block of access to websites related to the conflict in the Western Sahara (all of which are accessible to anyone with half a brain by proxy), the recent Nichane case, the foreign journalists who were barred from going to the Western Sahara.

What it does not mention are the minor breaches: the banning of numerous blogging and photo sites (Livejournal.com being the most major), the policemen ordered to seize cameras if caught taking photographs of the king during his recent city tour. Still no word at all, actually, on why the government banned Livejournal and other sites - could it be a fear of blogging? Obviously, it hasn’t stopped Morocco’s blogging community. A phobie des idées?

So taboo subjects are fewer. Yet talking about them, or writing about them, rather, is a larger problem than it has been in the past eight years.

Morocco may be the 100th country to abolish the death penalty, and the first country in the so-called Arab world to do so.  Although Morocco hasn’t used capital punishment since 1994, death sentences are still being handed down to terrorists.

The international association Ensemble pour l’abolition de la peine de mort (Together Against Capital Punishment) held a press conference today in Rabat, just weeks before the 3rd World Congress Against Death Penalty.

Maghreb Arab Presse, the country’s state-run news source, stated that “choosing Morocco to hold this press conference in preparation for the World Congress Against Death Penalty is a ‘political and strategic choice’ that supports Moroccan and Arab abolitionists.”

Capital punishement, however, is supported by the PJD (Justice and Development Party), a moderate Islamist political party, due to the fact that punishment by death is consistent with Islamic Shari’a law.

Insha’allah, Morocco will take this step; I will then feel safer here than I do in the United States, officially.

Aboubakr Jamai, managing editor of Moroccan weekly Le Journal Hebdomadaire, is resigning in a move that signals the obvious decline of press freedom in Morocco.

Jamai, a former Yale World Fellow, has been with the magazine since its 1997 inception, stated to Reporters Without Borders that:  “Staying on as managing director and therefore as the person legally responsible for the ‘Journal Hebdomadaire’ would have endangered its survival. The threat is not hypothetical, as it already happened in 2004, when the authorities sold off some of the newspaper’s property and seized funds directly from the distribution company Sapress as a result of an earlier damages award.”

“For those who follow the Moroccan media closely, Jamaï’s departure is a significant loss and marks the end of an era in which, despite the difficulties, it seemed possible to increase freedom of expression,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Today this hope is becoming more and more tenuous, even if it has not completely disappeared.”

Although the magazine has experienced several massive monetary blows, Jamai’s resignation is a direct result of a $350,000 fine given to the magazine nine months ago in damages to Claude Moniquet, head of the Brussels-based security think tank European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, for libel claims. By resigning, Jamai will free the magazine of their monetary burden.

Jamai has also been a regular on the Washingtonpost.com blog, publishing in English articles which, in Morocco, would be considered too outrageous or controversial.

Perhaps the saddest part of the story is a rumour that Jamai will be pressured to exile, and has plans to leave Morocco.

Links:

Committee to Protect Journalists

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontieres)

According to Reporters Without Borders, a verdict is due today in the Nichane trial.  Editor Driss Ksikes and journalist Sanae al-Aji face 3-5 years in prison as well as a lifetime ban on working in journalism for publishing popular Moroccan jokes told commonly on the streets.  These jokes are said to “defame Islam” and “insult the king.”

Over the past few weeks, local and international groups have condemned the trial and decision to ban the publication, calling it a violation of press freedom.  One such group drew up a petition, posted on what appears to be Nichane’s former website, carries the following statement:

We…strongly condemn the unlawful ban imposed on Nichane…and the legal proceedings started against the editor and a journalist working for the magazine…. We maintain that the ban is illegal and…reinforces the extra-judiciary repressive measures already in force. While we express our full and wholehearted solidarity with Nichane…we reiterate our plea for the amendment of liberticidal laws regarding freedom of the press and freedom of opinion and thought.

A group of Moroccan writers (including Ibrahim Khatib, Abdellatif Laabi and Abdelhak Serhane) have joined together in solidarity, issuing a joint statement denouncing the trial and resulting decisions.  “A society which doesn’t laugh at itself is a society condemned to all forms of bigotry and the creep of extremism,” they stated.

The International Press Institute has issued a letter to the European Parliament, noting their “deep concern” for the prosecution of Ksikes and Al-Aji.  A portion of the letter stated:

IPI views the action taken against Nichane and its editor and journalist as a severe violation of press freedom.  We strongly believe that the threat of imprisonment is never justified in retaliation for the dissemination of news and information or for expressions of opinion, no matter how unsettling or offensive they may seem to those involved.

The blogging world is also up in arms, as Global Voices Online reported (this here blog was even quoted).

Although the jokes are no longer available on Nichane’s website, several bloggers have translated them into French and English (Nichane published in derija, the lingua franca of Morocco).  For the jokes in English, direct your browser to eatbees blog and see for yourself if the Moroccan government is doing the right thing, or if the rest of the world is right.

Meanwhile, I’ll be at Google News, refreshing the page every minute or so.