Even an advice to the king of Morocco can bring you to jail (or worse).

One more article written by Souleiman Raissouni.

Lessons from Bachir Skiredj

 

Three lessons can be learned from the videotape in which the actor Bachir Skiredj brazenly insulted the royal family. The first lesson is that the way the royal palace communicates with Moroccan citizens must be reconsidered, and the first step to be taken in this regard is to reactivate the function of the official spokesman for the royal palace, instead of keeping a loose rein on the owner of the Facebook page that is run in the name of Soufyan al-Bahri. The function of the palace spokesman should not be limited to announcing what royal activities are official, but rather to act as an administration that tracks news and rumors circulating frequently about members of the royal family, and to address it by confirming, correcting or  denying it, or even alerting that such-and-such issue is a private matter of such-and-such individual from the royal family, and that in case that any publication or electronic newspaper includes defamation, insult, or harm to the private life of the king's person, the person of the crown prince, or members of the royal family, or a breach of the duty of reverence and respect for the king's person, that person responsible for that will be prosecuted according to the laws in force.

The sultanistic logic based on the fact that the citizen does not have the right to engage in three areas, namely politics, sharia and the person of the sultan, no longer exists except in the latter field, since discussing politics and sharia by the public has become accepted. But digging in the personal life of the person of the king and members of the royal family is no longer restricted by the rules of ancient royal morals only, but also by modern rules of morality that reject digging into the private lives of individuals, so how about the private life of the head of state and his family? However, if the Moroccans find themselves, from time to time, confronted with news and rumors leaking from the cracks of the royal palace, which are further fueled by the international press, or they are confronted with confused statements issued by a person who does not stop presenting himself as a clown to the king, and who has relations with generals, in-laws and senior officials, in order to give credence to his words, it becomes clear that setting out a communication policy for the royal palace is imperative. A policy that re-activates and expands the role of the official spokesperson for the royal palace, and that also develops a strategy for royal meetings with the press, which, for two considerations, begins with conducting a royal dialogue with Moroccan journalists. The primary consideration is that the first people to be concerned with the situation of Morocco and the views of its king are Moroccans. Secondary, to dispel the notion that the royal environment underestimates the Moroccan press and journalists. The value of the king’s dialogue with responsible and courageous journalists lies mainly in making him talk about important matters that those around him do not dare to ask him about. In his interview with the magazine Paris Match in 2002, the king did not hesitate to correct the widespread information that his brother-in-law is a senior bank official. He said: “My brother-in-law is an educator who lives in Fez, and my wife is an information technology engineer.” Also, in the dialogue he held with the media in Madagascar two years ago, he touched upon a matter that would have an aftermath, regarding the debate on freedom of belief, when he said: “The King of Morocco is commander of the faithful for all religions ... and Morocco absolutely does not seek to impose Islam.

The second lesson, which can be learned from the video of Skiredj, is that the relationship that the financial and decision-making circles establish within the state with artists, intellectuals and journalists, pretending to be loyal to those circles, is a relationship that is weaker than a spider thread, because it associates loyalty with giving, and whenever the second (i.e. giving) stops, the first (i.e. loyalty) is cut off. Rather, sometimes submissiveness turns into hatred, as Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi explains through the concept of “dhahl” (rancor), which was explained by the Egyptian philosopher Abd al-Rahman Badawi by saying: “Dhahl is the repeated feeling of previous abuse that a person has experienced, while he was not able to revenge to those who did this to him, because he was unable to respond immediately, and so he will be remembering it from a distance. "

The words of Bachir Skiredj were filled with shameless audacity and mixed with a lot of lies and allegations and so they were not included in this contribution. But his words enter into the artist’s relationship with authority, a relationship ruled by hypocrisy and overacting in praise instead of criticism, and therefore, many artists affiliated with the authority, like the dependent politicians, find in closed sessions a space for breathing, and "stick up the middle finger from under the jalabas" as stated in the well-known joke.

The third and final lesson, which must be learned from Bachir Skiredj, is entitled: Playing with fire, as the authority has worked in recent years to create and encourage dozens of newspapers, or even crimepapers, both in printed and electronic form, whose sole mission is to defame politicians, jurists, and independent journalists, and dig into their private lives and fabricate unethical stories about them. These newspapers and websites are the ones that recently took te lead of the gang responsible for the character assassination of their colleague journalist Tawfiq Bouachrine, to the point that the editor-in-chief of a printed weekly magazine and website of this category was not satisfied with the false news he had published against his detained colleague, and so during the last month of Ramadan he threw himself on contacting party leaders to tell them that the court will show a tape of Bouachrine together with his sister-in-law. By chance I was with a political official when this wicked colleague called him, so I was able to assure him, and later to others, that Bouachrine's wife has no sister at all. Whoever signed the decision to manipulate the press and turn it from a news gathering body into an intelligence gathering body, does not know that he is playing with fire that will grow out of control, because when we uproot the professional press and plant the defamation press in its place, it is certain that we will harvest generations that do not care about news, analysis and journalistic investigation, but rather will they search for indecent rumors. Just like a drug addict who is looking for his dose of heroin.

The original Arabic version of this article can be found here: 

https://maacom.ma/%d8%af%d8%b1%d9%88%d8%b3-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a8%d8%b4%d9%8a%d8%b1-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b3%d9%83%d9%8a%d8%b1%d8%ac/

Website: freeraissouni.com

Translated with help of Google Translate and edited by me. English is not my mother tongue.

 

Souleiman Raissouni, still in jail in Morocco because of his critical comments

Does this justify a year of detention without trial?

State against the state

Many are those who have said that the biggest beneficiary of the Corona crisis in Morocco is the state, which has regained the confidence of its citizens, and this had not happened for a long period of time. Even the king's cousin, Prince Hicham, whose writings are usually greeted with skeptical readings, wrote clearly without need to interpretation: “Many Moroccans in the context of this crisis have cast aside their grumbling and complaint, and have strengthened their confidence in the state.” There are also those who went further than Prince Hicham, comparing the Corona moment to historical periods in which Moroccans joined both horizontally and vertically, as happened after the exile of the Moroccan Sultan and the escalation of attacks on the nationalists, a period that would later be called the Revolution of the King and the People. This is quite correct, because “revolution is born from the womb of sorrows,” as Nizar Qabbani says. However, if sorrows unite more than joys when their source is 'the other' or is coming from outside, whether that other is a known occupier called France, or an unknown epidemic called Corona, then they (sorrows) turn into a stormy dispersal factor when they are coming from within, i.e. from the state, its employees, and its constitutional institutions. When a citizen discovers that the state has reduced itself to mere authority, or that the government, to which he has entrusted the helm of his ship’s command in the heart of the Corona storm, has given the ship to the winds of authoritarianism that are leading it in a direction that affects his rights and his freedom, then the citizen may turn into a negative being, rebuilding his relationship with the state and its institutions and symbols into some kind of taqiyya, which can be reduced to the image of that young man we see in the stadiums wrapping the national flag and drawing it on his forehead, and repeating the national anthem - albeit with upside down words - but as soon as he leaves the stadium, he turns its outside and the streets adjacent to it into a battlefield, wreaking havoc, emptying great violence which he had suppressed inside him, and which he had been hiding behind nationalism and against citizenship. Those who taught him this nationalism in schools and playgrounds thought that this would have become his fixed identity, before he could collide with the fact that whoever repeats “root of the free” (the national anthem) with strange words, will find himself repeating “In my country they treated me with injustice” (popular protest song) with a clear voice.

We have seen the horrors of the collapse of confidence between the components of the Revolution of the King and the People, immediately after independence, through what happened between the years 1958 and 1959 in the countryside, and of which Morocco is still undergoing the effects of its repercussions, as these effects controlled part of the recent Rif movement. And so it is important to warn that the collapse of confidence in the state at the moment of Corona may occur. We say this while we know that there are many differences, in time and characteristics, between the moment of independence and the moment of Corona. But what most combines the two moments is that the nature of confidence in them was and still is based on passion and enthusiasm, and is not based on a rational contract, nor is it protected by the mechanisms and institutions of supervision and accountability. And if we were to provide two examples about this, we would mention the rational and institutionalised withdrawal of confidence which the parliamentary opposition parties said they were intending, if the current circumstance had not been present, that is, to submit a request to withdraw confidence from the government after the leakage of the draft Law 22-20. But an emotional withdrawal of confidence will cause the people to disbelieve all parties, including the opposition and the radical opposition parties, and the political process will become for the people synonymous with opportunism and illicit enrichment, and state institutions become centers of coercion and subjugation. There is another matter that was not discussed regarding the return of Moroccans' confidence in the state and its institutions, namely that this confidence was in one direction only; the state did not exchange the people's confidence with its confidence, even when there was a growing number of varied petitions and balanced demands, in terms of quantity and quality, for the release of the protest movement's prisoners and journalists, in a way that would have contributed to a détente and reconciliation during the Corona pandemic. And since things are mentioned one by one, even when the Prison Delegate assumed a role that was not his, and went out attacking Amnesty International on the topic of (Royal) pardon, with which he has nothing to do, and accusing it (AI) of discrimination, because it called for the release of the Rif Hirak detainees, he forgot that the authority of which he assumed the role, i.e. the authority concerned with the pardon (i.e. the King), was the first to exercise discrimination, when it excluded all the Rif Hirak detainees, and released a mixture of convicted criminals and Salafist prisoners. If the authority that Saleh Tamek assumed to speak in its name had released one of the Rif detainees among the released, it would have the right - it and not him - to accuse Amnesty of discriminating between prisoners. As this authority actually practiced discrimination, Tamek did not succeed in what he volunteered to do. An official who defends discrimination while he believes he is criticizing it, or a minister who offends the state while he thinks he is serving its institutions, is indifferent to the "injustice" that comes out of a ministry named "Justice" and that is embodied in Draft Law 20-22, or is indifferent to the "injustice" of an interior minister who has thousands of citizens arrested in conditions that will cause their infection with Corona, while he believes that he protects them from Corona, or is indifferent to the "injustice" of  a prime minister who comes on television to tell Moroccans that he does not have a clear vision for what comes after May 20, while a small directorate, called the Directorate of Epidemic Control, announces that it has all scenarios available for lifting the quarantine, based on the development of the epidemiological situation in the country, or is indifferent to the "injustice" of public media that hosts the Prime Minister without asking him about the Draft Law that shook the country and preoccupies the people. Officials like these are the ones who destroy the fragile confidence, and stand against the state while they believe they are serving it or satisfying institutions within it. In all international experiences, these officials are the first to raise their hands when the state enters into difficult junctures, repeating: We were just helpers of the executive power.

The original Arabic version of this article can be found here: 

https://www.maghress.com/alyaoum24/1413200

More translations will follow in the coming days.

Website: freeraissouni.com

Translated with help of Google Translate and edited by me. English is not my mother tongue.

Moroccan journalist Souleiman Raissouni in jail for his writings.

Moroccan journalist Souleiman Raissouni is in jail for more than a year now, waiting for a trial. He started a hunger strike almost 7 weeks ago and his life is in danger.

Here you can read the content of his writings. Writing a critical comment like this can send you to jail in Morocco. There is no doubt he is punished for his critical writings, although the authorities say he commited a sexual offense.

Read it and judge yourself. Many political leaders in the West would be glad if their critics would be so mild.

 

The disappearance of the reports of Hammouchi and Abdel Nabaoui

Without any prior or subsequent notice, the reports of the General Directorate of National Security, that it was submitting regularly, disappeared from its security operations to impose the state of emergency, and with it also disappeared the figures that were reaching us, first-hand, about the number of people arrested, and the number of persons who were put in custody to be referred to the Public Prosecution.

Subsequently, after days, the Public Prosecution Report disappeared, and we remained without figures on the number of people who were subjected to judicial prosecution, as well as the percentage of those referred to the court in the after arrest, and of those prosecuted without custody. Suddenly, these reports disappeared, without us knowing the reason, and without asking one of the bodies that are obligated to inquire about their disappearance (It came in the name of Allah .. It did not come, thanks to Allah).

In the absence of clarification of the two concerned authorities, let us raise the possibility that there is a factor, even if it is not the unique, that led to stopping these reports. It certainly was among the most important factors that made the administrations of Hammouchi and Abdel Nabaoui say: "How much do we solve by just stopping it." That factor is represented by the fact that the number of prosecuted persons exceeded the number of persons tested for COVID.

How? In its last statement, the Presidency of the Public Prosecution Office announced that the Public Prosecution Offices of the Kingdom's courts have initiated judicial prosecution of a total of 65,352 people who violated the regulations of the state of health emergency, since the entry into force of the aforementioned decree-law until Friday 08 May 2020 at 4:00 p.m. On the other hand, the number of people who underwent Corona tests did not exceed 63,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University statistics, which are approved globally.

Some may ask: Is it the fault of the security authorities and the Public Prosecution Office, if the number of cases that violated the law and required prosecution exceeds the number of laboratory tests? Their fault, after being the authority that ordered the implementation of the decree ruling the state of health emergency before being presented to Parliament, lies in enforcing a law which is in contradiction to the spirit of truth and law. At a time when Sisi’s Egypt suffices in fining those who have been caught without wearing a mask, so without arresting them, the Moroccan authorities, who are, in terms of human rights, light years ahead of Sisi’s Egypt, arrest many of those who go out without a mask. In doing this, the Moroccan authorities are completely ignoring the appeal of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet who called on governments to stop violating human rights under the pretext of the exceptional and emergency measures applied to confront the spread of the Coronavirus, and she said: “In some countries, thousands of people are arrested for violating the curfew, and this is an unnecessary and unsafe practice. Prisons and detention centers are extremely dangerous environments, and states should seek the release of those who can be safely released, and not detain more people."

The biggest self-imposed obstacle that our public prosecution suffers from, while it is required to protect the public interest, including public health, is that it often reduces itself to being a mere indictment authority. Even if the public prosecution office sees that the number of prosecuted persons exceeds the number of persons tested for Corona, it does not assess the fact that completion of a corona analysis for one person may not exceed 15 minutes, between taking the sample and obtaining the result from the test device, and this may be done by one person, while the prosecution of a person violating the quarantine regulations requires several working days, and it requires the intervention of several law enforcement officials, starting with the provision of at least two policemen to arrest the person accused of breaking the quarantine regulations, then the judicial police officer who will compose the report, as well as a number of security personnel in charge of detention on remand, in addition to the king’s attorney or his deputy before whom the person accused of breaking the quarantine regulations will be brought.

In case it is decided to prosecute him while held in custody, this will require several working days of the judge who will look into his case, of the registrar to record everything that happens during the sessions, as well as a number of court employees who will perform the administrative work related to the file, in addition to the lawyer who will represent him. When the accused is convicted and sent to prison, this institution will become more overcrowded, while there has already been a tremendous increase in the number of prisoners, and this may lead to additional burdens being added to the General Delegate of Prison Administration, who will have to issue statements to respond to human rights organizations that will denounce Morocco's lack of respect for the UN resolutions calling for restraint in imprisoning people, and which call on Morocco to follow the example of most countries in the world that have enacted legislation punishing the breach of quarantine with a fine only.

Based on this quick comparison in terms of the effort exerted by the public authorities to discourage quarantine violations, and the effort for corona detection tests, of which the World Health Organization promotes the expansion, in order to include the largest possible number of people, it can be noticed that the effort exerted to ban quarantine violations exceeds the effort exerted in carrying out Corona detection tests, which is, according to the World Health Organization, the most important measure to prevent Corona, in addition to rational health quarantine regulations of course.

However, up to now, there is no single person who has stated that the increase of restraining prosecutions contributes to the prevention of Corona, it may even lead to the opposite, especially if the prosecutions take place while the accused are held in custody. Is this the reason that led to the coverup of the reports of Hammouchi and Abdel Nabaoui? Even if it is not the direct cause, it must be the reason for pushing Parliament to review the requirements of the Emergency Decree and stripping it of the custodial penalty and defining a fine as a sufficient penalty. It should also be the reason for the security forces and the Public Prosecution Office not to resort to arrest and prosecution except in the most extreme cases.

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The original Arabic version of this article can be found here: 

https://www.maghress.com/alyaoum24/1417799

More translations will follow in the coming days.

Website: freeraissouni.com

Translated with help of Google Translate and edited by me. English is not my mother tongue.