(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Minister of the Interior Ahmed Midaoui, RSF protested the seizure of the French weekly “Courrier International”. RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard asked the minister to “cast aside this decision, which once again demonstrates that the authorities are prepared to censor foreign newspapers as soon as they report on sensitive issues.” […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Minister of the Interior Ahmed Midaoui, RSF protested the seizure of the French weekly “Courrier International”. RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard asked the minister to “cast aside this decision, which once again demonstrates that the authorities are prepared to censor foreign newspapers as soon as they report on sensitive issues.” The organisation denounced “the real contradiction between the statements made by Prime Minister Abderrahmane Youssoufi, who said on 4 December that he ‘supported press freedom’, and recent press freedom violations”. Since the beginning of the year, eight newspapers have been seized, including the two French newspapers “Jeune Afrique – L’Intelligent” and “Le Figaro”, three journalists have been placed under house arrest and another was threatened. Recently, the Rabat bureau chief for Agence France Presse was expelled and the country’s three largest weeklies were permanently banned.
According to information collected by RSF, the 14 December 2000 issue of the French weekly “Courrier International” was seized by the authorities, who offered no explanation for the move. The weekly’s most recent issue included a special report on Morocco. Four pages of the report included contributions from the editors of “Le Journal”, “Assahifa” and “Demain”, three weeklies which were permanently banned at the beginning of December for having “threatened the stability of the state” (see IFEX alert of 4 December 2000).
On 25 November and 1 December, respectively, “Le Journal” and “Assahifa” published a letter credited to former opposition figure Mohamed Basri, which stated that the Moroccan Left was involved in the attempted coup d’état against King Hassan II in 1972, and directly implicated Youssoufi, the current prime minister and president of the Socialist Union of Polular Forces (Union socialiste des forces populaires, USFP, a leftist party). Ali Lmrabet, the editor of “Demain”, stated that he does not understand why his magazine was also banned, since it had simply “mentioned the disclosures of ‘Le Journal’.”
