Category: all things moroccan

The condition of migrants who try to cross from Morocco to Spain continues to worsen. Just this week, a seventeen year old boy from Cameroon, who had traveled from his native country all the way to Morocco in order to penetrate Europe, was found dead.

Spain and Morocco’s security forces are investigating the death of a Cameroonian boy whose body was found a short distance from the border fence where a group of 300 would-be immigrants battled police on Sunday night in an attempt to force their way into Melilla.

The body of the youth, identified as 17-year-old Joe Ypo, was found shortly after 7pm on Monday on the Moroccan side of the border. In the same area 17 hours earlier the group of mostly sub-Saharan migrants had used makeshift ladders in an attempt to scale the barbed-wire fence that rings the Spanish North African enclave. They were fought back by 80 Spanish Civil Guard officers armed with riot gear as well as Moroccan border guards, resulting in injuries to 10 officers and three immigrants. Eighty-seven of the assailants were arrested by Moroccan police.

People are using ladders to climb over land borders and inflatable boats to cross water ones. What limits does desperation have to reach before something is done for them?

An editorial in the Los Angeles Times a couple of weeks ago alerted me to the troubles facing Tel Quel magazine, its editor-in-chief, Ahmed R. Benchemsi, and its news director, Karim Boukhari. The Times‘ editorial is no longer available online, unfortunately, but it detailed a bizarre turn of events that could have only taken place in Al-Maghrib Al-Habib.

Let me get to the facts. In one of its summer issues, the magazine ran a blind item by Karim Boukhari poking fun at an unnamed Member of Parliament, of an unnamed political party, saying that she had gotten into a verbal fight with a colleague and sneered that the latter “ate escargots.” (I can’t help but mention, en passant, that only in Morocco is being accused of eating escargots an insult.)

A week later, Karim Boukhari posted another blind item about the same person, this time giving her the pseudonym of ‘Asmaa’ and saying that she used to earn a living as a ‘cheikha’ (which translates, roughly, as a ‘bar dancer’.) He repeated the escargots anecdote, said that there was nothing wrong with having worked as a ‘cheikha,’ and ended the item with “Asmaa, on t’aime!” (You don’t need me to translate that part, do you?)

Note that the MP was never named or described in ways that could have identified her. So the story should have ended there. Except it didn’t. In late July, charges of libel were brought against the magazine, its editor in chief, and its news director, by Member of Parliament Hlima Assali. The two journalists were asked to appear in court on August 8 (traditionally a period of rest for the courts). The editor-in-chief sent his lawyer to ask for a postponement, since he was planning a visit to the U.S. at that time and through the end of the month.

The magistrate did grant a postponement. But only for a week. Then, on August 15, in the absence of the editor-in-chief, the news director, and their lawyers, the judge closed the proceedings and found for the plaintiff, slapping the magazine with punitive damages of 1 million dirhams, plus a fine of 25.000 dirhams and a suspended jail sentence of two months for each of the journalists.

Some of you may not be familiar with Tel Quel, so let me put this in clear terms: Tel Quel is the best thing that’s happened to the Moroccan press in the last five years. It has broken many unspoken rules of self-censorship with its coverage of, among other things, the king’s salary, the horrific border crossings of migrants, the incursions of Islamists on all aspects of the culture, the sex lives of Moroccans, the independence demonstrations in the Sahara, and so on. The style is occasionally sensationalistic, but, alone among other publications, the magazine has had the courage to demand that the women who were jailed after the Agadir sex scandal should be freed.

All this is a long way of saying that if you care for freedom of the press, if you think that people should have the right to be present at their own trial, if you think that a blind item can’t serve as the basis of a libel suit, if you think that such a suit shouldn’t end in a fine of $100,000 in a country where the average salary is less than $300, then please support Tel Quel by signing the online petition.

Amnesty International reports that six human rights activists were arrested by the Moroccan government in Western Sahara, and some of them possibly tortured.

The rights activists are under investigation for allegedly participating in or promoting an armed gathering. Amnesty International fears that they have been targeted because of their human rights work during recent events or their openly held views in favour of independence of Western Sahara.

Read the full report here.

In an article published in the Spanish paper La Vanguardia (full text here), IMPAC-award winning author Tahar Ben Jelloun recounts an airport anecdote that I thought worth quoting:

El pasado mes de marzo fui invitado a Estados Unidos por la prestigiosa Universidad de Princeton para dar una serie de conferencias. Subo al avion, si que la compania tiene que comunicar la lista de los pasajeros que se disponen a entrar en suelo estadounidense. Como todos, relleno los impresos que nos distribuyen y que hay que entregar a la policia de fronteras. Tengo un pasaporte frances. Lo presento. En cuanto el policia estadounidense ve un nombre arabe, se pone a teclear en el ordenador durante cinco minutos, entrega mis documentos a otro agente y luego me pide que lo siga a un despacho situado al final del aeropuerto. Me instalan en una sala donde observo la presencia de otros arabes. Angustiado, no digo nada. Espero. Lo si, soy sospechoso. ” De que? ” Que he hecho? Empiezo a preguntarme que puedo haber hecho. Me digo que quize he cometido un delito y que mi memoria lo ha borrado. Espero. Pienso en K., el personaje de El proceso de Kafka. A veces basta con una naderea para caer en el absurdo. No es posible leer nada en el rostro del agente encargado de mis papeles. Lo miro y bajo los ojos. Empiezo a tener miedo. Me digo: ” y si me confunde con otra persona que se llama igual que yo, con alguien buscado? Para cuando se demostrara el error ya estaraa en Guantanamo. Crece la tension. Espero, no me atrevo a preguntar que pasa. Me han dicho que nunca hay que protestar en estos casos.

Al cabo de cuarenta minutos, el agente me llama y me hace una serie de preguntas. Mi ingles es deficiente. Respondo en frances y luego en ingles aproximado. Me hace preguntas trampa: ” quien es Amin? Es mi hijo. ” Cual es su fecha de nacimiento? De pronto sufro un lapsus de memoria. Doy la de otro de mis hijos. Le muestro la invitacion de Princeton. No queda muy intimidado. Sigue escribiendo en el teclado del ordenador. Entonces me acuerdo de un articulo que escribo sobre la guerra de Iraq donde pedia que Bush fuera llevado ante el Tribunal Penal Internacional por haber matado a inocentes en Iraq. Me digo que la policia me retiene por eso. Tras un momento de silencio en que habla con otro agente, me devuelve el pasaporte. Salgo, veo mi maleta sola en la cinta. Los otros pasajeros, europeos, no han sido sometidos a interrogatorio alguno.

Essentially, Ben Jelloun says that he was invited to give a series of talks at Princeton last March. Upon arriving at the airport, he presented his French passport. The officer looked at his Arab name, spent a few minutes typing on his keyboard, then took him to a waiting area at the other end of the airport with other Arabs. After a 40-minute wait, he was asked a few questions, like “Who is Amin?” “My son.” “What is his date of birth?”

Ben Jelloun showed the officer his invitation from Princeton, but, he said, the man “didn’t seem impressed.” Then, Ben Jelloun remembered an article he’d written the year before, in which he suggested that President Bush be tried by the International Tribunal for the killing of innocent Iraqis*. After some delay, he was given his passport back and allowed to collect his luggage.

Ben Jelloun uses the anecdote to illustrate the clash between Occident and Orient, one a powerful, easily-recognizable mass, the other a mosaic of countries sometimes situated in Asia, the Middle-East, or North Africa. He argues that while the clash of civilizations is a simplistic way of looking at how cultures interact, the clash of ignorances is a reality, and until we begin to know each other, we have no hope of understanding and respecting one another.

Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun is the Goncourt- and IMPAC-award winning author of more than ten novels, four collections of poetry, several memoirs, plays, and anthologies. He resides in Paris.

Link via Label ASH.

*Thanks to David R. for the clarification

An Al-Jazeera journalist’s permit has been withdrawn by the Moroccan government on charges of ‘bias’ in reporting news about Western Sahara. Despite impressive advances in freedom of speech in the last five years, the Sahara issue remains very touchy in the Kingdom. In fact, just recently, journalist Ali Lmrabet incurred the wrath of the authorities for a Sahara-related article. Lmrabet received the 2005 Hellman/Hammet Award, which is given out to “writers all around the world who have been victims of political persecution and are in financial need.” Not the kind of award I want to see Moroccans listed for, ever.

As of July 13, more than 500,000 Moroccans have returned to the kingdom for annual vacation from their places of residence in Europe. I wouldn’t want to be working the freeway toll booth, man.