(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Minister of the Interior Ahmed Midaoui, RSF protested the seizure of an issue of the weekly “Rissalat Al Foutouwa”, voice of the student section of the Islamic association Al-Adl Wal Ihsane (Justice and Spirituality). RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard urged the minister of the interior to “reconsider this decision.” He […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Minister of the Interior Ahmed Midaoui, RSF protested the seizure of an issue of the weekly “Rissalat Al Foutouwa”, voice of the student section of the Islamic association Al-Adl Wal Ihsane (Justice and Spirituality). RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard urged the minister of the interior to “reconsider this decision.” He also asked him to provide an explanation for the pressure that the authorities have brought to bear against the printers and distributors who were approached by the organisation’s two publications, “Rissalat Al Foutouwa” and “Al-Adl Wal Ihsane”. “It is unacceptable that these Islamic newspapers, which have the necessary permits, cannot publish freely like any other publication,” said Ménard.
In RSF’s opinion, press freedom applies to all media, regardless of their political or religious tendencies, as long as they do not publish or broadcast racist or discriminatory remarks or call for violence.
According to information collected by RSF, issue 34 of the weekly “Rissalat Al Foutouwa” (dated 2 April 2001) was seized on 6 April by the authorities, who gave no explanation for their action. Yet Mohamed Aghnaj, publication director of “Rissalat Al Foutouwa”, is in possession of a valid receipt, dated February 1999, authorising him to publish his newspaper. According to him, “the authorities exert strong pressure on the printers and distributors who are approached by the newspaper in order to prevent it from publishing.” As an example, the distributor Sapress stopped distributing the newspaper in November 2000 after receiving “instructions from above.” Three printers told the managers of “Rissalat Al Foutouwa” that they stopped printing the newspaper by order of Hamidou Laânigri, director of the Intelligence Services (Direction de la surveillance du territoire, DST). As a result of this pressure, the weekly’s director was forced to print and distribute the newspaper through a network of activists from the Al-Adl Wal Ihsane association. But these activists have often been arrested for distributing copies of the weekly outside mosques. Moreover, copies of the newspaper have been seized on several occasions (issue 11, dated 26 January 2000, issue 19 of the second week of May 2000, issue 18 of the first week of May 2000). In none of these instances did the authorities provide any explanation for their actions. Faced with these growing difficulties, in January 2001, “Rissalat Al Foutouwa” was forced to reduce the number of pages it printed per issue. The weekly “Al-Adl Wal Ihsane”, for its part, has not published in the last year, following similar pressure on printers and distributors.
