Morocco: Saudi Restrictions on Moroccan Woman an “Insult”
August 30th, 2010 by Anna
Nesrine Malik argues in The Guardian that Saudi Arabia “is failing in its Islamic duties” by banning (Arabic) some Moroccan women from undertaking the umra (the lesser pilgrimage to Mecca). According to Saudi authorities, women “of a certain age” might abuse their travel visas “for other purposes” while abroad. Malik claims that this is meant to reference the sex industry, which is stereotypically staffed by North African women. Suggesting that Moroccan women might use a religious ritual as a guise for engaging in illicit sexual activity is, in Malik’s view, a charge that “summarily insult[s] the [Moroccan] nation.” Rather than using national stereotypes that draw on the perception of Morocco as being morally lax to justify restrictions on some travelers, Malik asserts, the Saudi government should be facilitating pilgrimages to Mecca for all Muslims. Political parties in Morocco have reportedly called on the parliament to intervene.
Posted in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Women | Comment »
Morocco: Civil Society as a Catalyst for Change?
July 13th, 2010 by Farid
An interesting article in The Daily Star assesses the role that civil society has played in reforming Moroccan politics since the 1990’s. According to Moha Ennaji, once “the electoral law was revised so all members of the country’s Parliament were elected by popular vote,” then under this democratic atmosphere, “a multitude of civil society organizations and associations emerged on the national scene, improving human rights, women’s rights, economic development, education and health.”
Ennaji describes two main types of civil society organizations in Morocco: One filling the gap where the government has failed to provide, and the other being human rights groups who have strengthened the democratic nature of the country. “Civil society organizations have become real schools of democracy by training youth to be more engaged in community work and collective action in pursuit of the common good,” she says adding that the current challenge that civil society in Morocco is facing the need to become innovative and form a “genuine partnership with the state” while while still working independently to fulfill the needs of the people.
Posted in Civil Society, Human Rights, Morocco, Reform | Comment »
Morocco: Not the Region’s Worst Oppressor
July 7th, 2010 by Jennifer
In a new piece at Commentary, Jennifer Rubin praises Menachem Rosensaft’s op-ed on recent controversy in Congress over the expulsion of foreign and American citizens from Morocco on grounds of alleged proselytizing. Rubin states that Rosensaft “provides some much-needed perspective on the incident,” and agrees with his assessment that Morocco “is the least of our concerns when it comes to suppression of religious freedom in the Middle East.” Rubin also mentions a letter sent by the World Jewish Congress last week to House Foreign Affairs Committee members and co-chairman of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission– which held a hearing on the issue in June — urging caution toward any condemnation of Morocco, and calling the country “a paradigm of religious freedom and tolerance” in the region. Rubin concludes with a criticism of the Obama administration’s policy on these issues, arguing that “the best use of the time and focus of Congress — which is at least making a good effort to pick up the slack from an administration utterly indifferent to the issue of religious freedom — would be to focus on the worst actors in the Muslim World, not the best.”
Posted in Freedom, Morocco, US foreign policy | Comment »
Morocco: “Beacon” of Religious Tolerance, or Repressor?
June 30th, 2010 by Jennifer
Menachem Rosensaft, founder and Chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, writes at the Huffington Post that recent reactions by some U.S. Congressmen to the deportation of American citizens from Morocco on charges of proselytizing, are overly harsh and not merited. Rosensaft says that Jews and Christians practice their faith openly in Morocco without persecution, calling the North African nation “a rare beacon of tolerance in an otherwise mostly religiously xenophobic Muslim world.” He notes that Morocco is only one of many nations in the Arab and Muslim worlds with laws against proselytism on the books, and argues that the foreign citizens were expelled for violating national laws, not for their personal religion.
Rosensaft’s commentary comes in light of a hearing on religious freedom in Morocco held by the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the U.S. House of Representatives in mid-June, in which several Congressmen leveled heavy criticism against the Moroccan government and called for repercussions. Rosensaft notes that Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) went so far as to equate Morocco’s actions to those of the Nazi regime in Germany, commenting, “these comparisons are over the top and betray either an ignorance or a disregard of history.”
Posted in Congress, Human Rights, Morocco | 1 Comment »
Morocco: When Patronage Prevents Reform
May 7th, 2010 by Josh
Carnegie’s Arab Reform Bulletin has a new piece up on Morocco, discussing how the pernicious culture of corruption has diminished the political efficacy of Morocco’s previously pro-reform Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP). Maati Monjib, a professor and researcher at Mohammed V University in Rabat, recounts a recent episode of three top USFP leaders freezing their party membership after party leader Abdelwahed Radi gave a speech ceding all power for constitutional reforms to the monarchy — a concession that some thought flew in the face of USFP’s stated goal of seeking “political and constitutional reform to extricate the country from the crisis of its struggling democracy.” Many within the party believe Radi surrendered his principles in order to become speaker of the monarchy-controlled parliament.
Lamenting this betrayal of USFP’s “progressive, modernist roots,” Monjib contends that it’s simply “emblematic of problems inside other political parties as well, which struggle with how to pursue their principles in light of Morocco’s patronage based system and the centripetal force of the monarchy.”
Posted in Morocco, Political Parties, Reform | Comment »
UN Renews Peacekeeping Mission in Western Sahara
May 6th, 2010 by Josh
After a rather heated UN Security Council debate, a majority of the 15-member council voted to extend the UN’s peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara (MINURSO) for one year under the terms of the UN-brokered 1991 ceasefire agreement between Morocco and the Western Saharan-based Polisario Front independence movement. However, the resolution did not include provisions to monitor human rights — sought by some on the council — prompting a Polisario spokesman to condemn the action as grossly inadequate and a “scandal for the credibility of the United Nations and the Security Council.”
In the context of ongoing negotiations over the occupied territory, Moroccan Foreign Minister Taieb Fassi praised the UN for producing a resolution that is consistent with Morocco’s approach and affirms the vision of graduated autonomy, not full independence.
Prior to MINURSO’s extension, human rights advocates had implored UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to push for the establishment of a “UN mechanism that would monitor and report on human rights.” Polisario did the same during a meeting with top UN officials last month, after which Ban expressed his desire to find a solution “that provides for the self-determination for the people of Western Sahara.”
Posted in Human Rights, Morocco, United Nations, Western Sahara | Comment »
Online Social Networking Disruptions in Egypt, Morocco
March 17th, 2010 by Josh
Over at Global Voices Advocacy, Ramy Raoof draws attention to the recent disruption in Skype connectivity for Egyptians using USB modems. According to an exchange Raoof had with Vodaphone, a large internet service provider in Egypt, the government’s National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA) decided to block Skype for USB modem users after three telecommunication companies complained about revenue losses incurred from customers using Skype’s free service. Egyptian law mandates that all international calls be filtered through majority state-owned Telecom Egypt — one of the companies reporting lower-then-anticipated earnings — and the NTRA noted that it is only targeting what it considers illegal voice traffic on mobile Internet, not fixed traffic. “This is due to the fact it is against the law since it bypasses the legal gateway,” said an NTRA official.
Elsewhere, a Moroccan Facebook group advocating for the separation of religion and education was administratively deleted from the website without warning. Official inquiries by Kacem El Ghazzali, a Moroccan activist and founder of the group, to ascertain the reason for the shut-down went unanswered. Alluding to previous examples of inconsistent, suspicious, and unexplained Terms of Service (TOS) enforcement by Facebook officials, Jillian York from Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society suspects the Moroccan government may have pressured Facebook into removing the group from its server. “It seems that Facebook is now policing speech, possibly at the behest of a foreign government.” York also penned a separate piece commenting on an Issandr El Amrani post last week exploring the role of Facebook in Middle Eastern politics (covered here). Though agreeing that Facebook is certainly being used for political purposes, she contends that “The downfall, of course, is Facebook itself, which has garnered a reputation for selectively enforcing its own TOS.”
Posted in Egypt, Morocco, Technology | Comment »
Morocco: Christian Aid Workers Expelled
March 15th, 2010 by Josh
In what many view as a sudden and unexpected change in policy, the Moroccan government announced the forthcoming deportation of dozens of Christian aid workers after accusing them of unlawful proselytizing. Although a Moroccan official rejected claims of discrimination and maintained that this was simply a “move against people who don’t respect the law of this country,” U.S. Ambassador to Morocco Samuel Kaplan was “discouraged and saddened” by what he views as the unnecessary expulsion of law-abiding foreign nationals. “We hope to see significant improvements in the application of due process in this sort of case,” he said.
Unsurprised by this rather arbitrary crackdown, even after years of relative tolerance under King Mohamed VI, one observer at the Moroccan Dispatches surmises that Morocco’s inconsistent enforcement of various laws — oftentimes subject to whether or not an offender can afford to pay off the authorities — makes it “hard to know what really is permissible and what is not…since a rule on the books does not necessarily mean anything.”
Posted in Freedom, Judiciary, Morocco | Comment »
The Possibilities — and Perils — of Facebook
March 9th, 2010 by Josh
Just last week, POMED co-sponsored an event to explore the implications of new media technologies for both ground-level reform movements as well as U.S. foreign policy. Featured panelist Jared Cohen insisted that the proliferation of “value-neutral” information and connection technologies (ICT) demands a restructuring of U.S. policy tools to help influence these forces and push back against extremist groups who exploit ICT for nefarious purposes.
Of course, one of the most ubiquitous emerging technologies is Facebook, and Issandr El Amrani has a post up highlighting recent intersections of the popular networking client with Middle Eastern politics. While Facebook has thus far been a boon for Mohamed ElBaradei during his recent political surge, it also led to the arrest of a Moroccan man who purported to be a member of the royal family on his Facebook profile. And although he was recently pardoned for his indiscretion, some believe his experience demonstrates how ICT provides authoritarian governments with yet another tool to monitor and disrupt dissent. El Amrani also draws attention to a slightly more innocuous case of social media savvy in Saudi Arabia, where the Minister of Culture used Facebook as a PR mechanism to deny rumors of banned books at the Riyadh Book Fair.
Despite these concerns, some still champion ICT as an invaluable mobilizing force for oppositionists. Over at Foreign Policy, Mohammad Sadeghi — head administrator of Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard’s Supporters’ Network on Facebook — argues that the Green Movement “owes its greatest successes to the horizontal organization and innovative use of technology.” And yesterday, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that it would ease web-related sanctions for Sudan, Iran, and Cuba, perhaps indicating that the Obama administration believes in the democratizing power of ICT as well.
Posted in Egypt, Iran, Morocco, Reform, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Technology, US foreign policy, sanctions | 1 Comment »
Morocco: EU Presses Morocco on Human Rights Record
March 8th, 2010 by Chanan
European Union President Herman Van Rompuy chided Morocco for its human rights record at summit-level talks between the EU and Morocco, calling on the country to make progress particularly in the disputed Western Sahara region. “We also wish for improvements to the situation of human rights and their defenders on this issue,” he said referring to Aminatou Haidar, a Western Sahara activist who last year went on a 32-day hunger strike after Moroccan authorities denied her entry into the country.
The summit marked the first such talks between the EU bloc and an Arab nation. In October 2008, the EU granted Morocco ‘advanced status,’ an act that brings “the country closer to Europe than any other [country] from the Southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea” and “paves the way for Morocco to [integrate] into the EU market [similar] to Norway or Switzerland,” according to Joanna Sopinska of EuroPolitics.
Posted in Human Rights, Morocco, Uncategorized | Comment »
POMED Notes: “Promoting Security through Diplomacy and Development: The Fiscal Year 2011 International Affairs”
February 26th, 2010 by Josh
In a hearing on the administration’s recently released budget request, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs invited Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to give testimony on particular budgetary items relating to U.S. diplomatic and development efforts abroad. Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) opened the hearing with an affirmation of the value of investing in international diplomacy; not only to promote American values, but also as a method of prevention in order to mitigate the forces that cause international instability. Berman pledged to work with his colleagues to maintain or even increase the overall level of funding – approximately 1 percent of the entire Fiscal Year 2011 federal budget request – but ranking Republican committee member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) disagreed, using the poor economic environment as the basis to call for “selective freezes.” In particular, she questioned the wisdom of unconditionally funding the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), both of which she accuses of stealing hundreds of millions in foreign aid.
Click here for POMED’s notes in PDF, or continue reading below.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Afghanistan, Congressional Hearing Notes (House), Democracy Promotion, Diplomacy, Elections, Foreign Aid, Freedom, Hamas, Hezbollah, Human Rights, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Morocco, Multilateralism, Palestine, Protests, Sudan, Syria, US foreign policy, Western Sahara, Yemen, sanctions | 1 Comment »
Press Freedom: New Report on 2009 Violations in Middle East & North Africa
February 22nd, 2010 by Maria
The International Press Institute, an Austrian-based organization working to further freedom of expression around the world, released its World Press Freedom Review for 2009 earlier this month, focusing on the Middle East and North Africa. The report accounts for 110 journalists that were killed for their work in 2009, making it the most deadly year for journalists in the past decade, according to IPI.
This year’s report focuses on the Middle East and North Africa, including a section on the state of freedom of the press and expression for each country in the region; it also offers specific recommendations for each country in order to further its protection against free speech violations. Of the total 78 recommendations, 17 addressed governments’ need to protect independent reporting and seven more specifically addressed the need to protect bloggers and Internet freedoms.
The report calls on Tunisian authorities to “end persecution and harassment of journalists.” It states that “the systematic attacks meted out against the independent media in Tunisia over the past few months are an insult to press freedom.” It also claims journalists that offend authorities in Saudi Arabia are charged with fines, detention, interrogation, dismissal and harassment. “Criticism of the royal family or government policy is generally prohibited, and Saudi Arabia maintains tight control over media content.”
In January 2009, the Ministry of Information in Bahrain implemented a law that would give the ministry the ability to “block certain web sites without warning or referring the case to court,” said the report. It also describes the Egyptian government’s efforts to monitor Internet access through “real-world surveillance” and that “state security officers require owners of Internet cafes, which are used by a majority of users to access the Internet, to register the names and identity card numbers of users. Owners are also required to monitor which web sites are visited, and to report to the security forces on people who visit ‘political’ web sites.” The report also features an interview with Aboubakr Jamai, the editor of the Moroccan magazine Le Journal that was recently shut down.
A PDF of the full report can be accessed here.
Posted in Bahrain, Egypt, Freedom, Middle Eastern Media, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia | Comment »
Morocco: More Analysis on the Disruption of Free Speech
February 9th, 2010 by Maria
POMED’s Morocco page editor James Liddell has updated our Morocco country page with his latest analysis of the Le Journal closure and the arrest of a blogger who was organizing a blogger’s strike. Liddell believes we’re witnessing the daily “shrinking” of freedom of speech in Morocco. ”The fact that Moroccan officials do not recognize that safeguarding gains made in the most basic human rights — freedom of expression and organization — is in their national interest is testament to the growing insecurity and knee-jerk repressive comportment of the makhzen,” he writes. “A new and invigorated image management campaign should be predicated on a commitment to human rights, not constructing Potemkin villages.”
Posted in Freedom, Morocco | Comment »
Morocco: More Condemnations
February 5th, 2010 by Josh
In response to Le Journal’s shutdown as well as the recent arrest of Moroccan blogger Boubaker Al-Yadib, Freedom House released a statement strongly denouncing the government’s “use of exorbitant fines and libel cases to silence Morocco’s critics.” According to Freedom House advocacy directory Paula Schriefer, Al-Yadib’s arrest and subsequent six-month sentence was in response to his role in organizing a week-long blogging strike to protest restrictions on free expression. Courtney C. Radsch, Senior Program Officer for the Global Freedom of Expression campaign, sees this as an example of rank governmental hypocrisy: “Morocco retaliates against journalists for publishing,” she says, referring to Le Journal, “but then attacks bloggers for refusing to publish.”
Morocco is rated by Freedom House as “Partly Free” in its 2010 edition of “Freedom in the World,” a report that focuses on civil and political rights (coverage of its release found here). In the most recent edition of “Freedom of the Press,” however, Morocco earned a significantly lower score of “Not Free.”
Posted in Freedom, Human Rights, Journalism, Morocco, Publications | Comment »
Morocco: Life After Le Journal
February 4th, 2010 by Josh
In a fascinating piece at the Huffington Post, Aida Alami — a Moroccan journalist previously affiliated with Le Journal Hebdomadaire — details the circumstances surrounding the publication’s recent closure at the hands of Moroccan authorities. Corroborating Issandr El Amrani’s account at The Guardian, Alami describes a scene of Moroccan security agents taking control of Le Journal’s newsroom, sealing it off, and changing the locks. Although officials attribute the shut-down to Le Journal’s own financial failings, Alami, like others, views the action as an overt political decision to silence an “icon of the free press.”
She continued her commentary in an interview with the Herald de Paris, revealing that despite Le Journal’s courageous work, “the [Moroccan] public doesn’t want to hear the truth about issues.” Not only did the magazine have few friends, she said, but many Moroccans, even those within higher income brackets, saw it as anti-patriotic and overly critical. Regardless, she maintains that this does not detract from its invaluable service to Moroccan society.
Le Journal’s editor, Abou Bakr Jamai, continued to speak out against the government’s draconian behavior as well. Reuters quotes him as saying, “This is a clear case of financial asphyxiation.” The non-profit Reporters Without Borders added that “this judicial liquidation heralds the end of the first independent title in Morocco.”
Over at Morocco Board News Service, Hassan Masiky, former consultant for USAID and Amnesty International USA, writes that “the ramification of the closure of Le Journal Hebdomadaire will, without a doubt, have a lasting negative impact on the image of Morocco as a modern democracy.” In a diplomatic context, Masiky is convinced that these latest actions will make it difficult for the government “to push for its Advanced Status with the European Union or to convince the United Nation of its ability to establish a true regionalism system for the Western Sahara.”
Posted in Human Rights, Journalism, Morocco | Comment »
