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New York, January 15, 2013--Authorities should drop the criminal defamation charges against an editor in Morocco who reported that a government official had ordered champagne to his hotel room while on a taxpayer-funded trip outside the country, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. The official has disputed the account.
Committee to Protect Journalists
Morocco
Attacks on the Press
| Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia
The Middle East's political shifts changed conditions for journalists dramatically. The emerging trends favor free expression, but are filled with ambiguity and depend on the political configurations to emerge after the revolutionary dust has settled. By Mohamed Abdel Dayem
King Mohamed VI pledged a series of constitutional reforms in March after the region’s wave of popular uprisings passed through the kingdom. But the reforms did not extend to opening up the press. Authorities took concerted measures to suppress coverage of mass protests in Casablanca’s streets. During a March protest in the capital, Rabat, uniformed police assaulted several journalists covering its violent dispersal. The biggest and most controversial case in the kingdom was that of Rachid Nini, a prominent government critic, executive editor of the Moroccan daily Al-Massae, and owner of Al-Massae Media Group. He was detained in April and sentenced to one year in prison on charges of “denigrating judicial rulings” and “compromising the security and safety of the homeland and citizens.”
Reports
| Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Burma, Burundi, China, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, India, Iran, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Ivory Coast, Journalist Assistance, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Libya, Morocco, Rwanda, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen
Stark regional differences are seen as jailings grow significantly in the Middle East and North Africa. Dozens of journalists are held without charge, many in secret prisons. A CPJ special report
New York, June 9, 2011-- Today's one-year prison sentence against Rachid Nini, executive editor of the Moroccan daily Al-Massae and owner of Al-Massae Media Group, is the latest instance of the Moroccan government settling scores with critical journalists through a judiciary that is subservient to the executive branch, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
New York, May 4, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists called on Morocco today to release editor Rachid Nini and sought the release of journalist Dorothy Parvaz as well as other journalists in Syria. Press freedom violations continued throughout the region, with abuses in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Yemen.
New York, March 17, 2011--Bahraini authorities expelled a CNN reporter and briefly detained another international reporter on Wednesday amid an intensified crackdown on political unrest. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the Bahraini government's ongoing obstruction of news media and calls for authorities to allow journalists to cover this story of international import. Elsewhere in the region, anti-press attacks and harassment continued to be reported in Morocco, Yemen, and Libya.
Attacks on the Press
| Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Turkey, Yemen
Suppression Under the Cover of National Security
By Mohamed Abdel Dayem
Relying on an extensive network of sources in the military, government, and Islamist groups, Yemeni freelance journalist Abdulelah Shaea had become a frequent and pointed critic of the administration's counterterrorism efforts. By July, President Ali Abdullah Saleh's government had enough, dispatching security agents to seize and roughly interrogate Shaea for several hours about his reporting.
• Government pressures advertisers, uses courts to punish critical media.
• Authorities obstruct Spanish and other foreign reporters in Western Sahara.
Key Statistic
2: Leading independent weeklies that closed under government pressure. A daily facing harassment moved online.
The government continued using the judiciary to settle scores with critical journalists and pressuring private advertisers to avoid probing publications, two hallmarks of its antagonistic approach to independent and opposition media. The tactics forced two leading independent weeklies to close and a critical daily newspaper to move online.
New York, November 9, 2010--The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by an increasing climate of hostility for Spanish journalists in Morocco, highlighted by official measures to prevent Spanish journalists from covering clashes in the Western Sahara. CPJ calls on Rabat to allow journalists to do their work unimpeded.
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