Warnings for the independent press

Ali Lmrabet, publisher of the weekly magazines Demain and Douman and Reporters Without Borders correspondent in Morocco, will face a Rabat court on 7 May charged with "insulting the person of the king." On 3 May, his printers told him they would not longer print his magazines. These and other cases are described in a survey called "Warnings for the Independent Press," resulting from a fact-finding visit by Reporters Without Borders to Morocco from 22 to 27 April to look into the state of press freedom there. The Moroccan press blossomed during the last years of the reign of the late King Hassan II and several independent newspapers eventually broke taboos and exposing various scandals. But the new outspokenness displeased the country's rulers. The regime uses a range of devices to calm down the new generation of journalists. The Lmrabet case illustrates well what they are confronted with - lack of independent courts, difficulty of raising sensitive topics such as the person of the king, growing interference by state security agents, advertising boycotts and pressure from advertisers and printers. The Reporters Without Borders survey condemns the regular intervention by the government intelligence service, the DST. The press can these days write about and even criticise DST chief Hamidou Laânigri, but some aspects of the secret services are still sensitive. Journalists spoke of being followed, having their phones tapped and being threatened. The foreign media is under surveillance too since the authorities have always been very touchy about the country's image abroad. The communications ministry always complains when they cover an event in a way it does not like. Foreign journalists are sometimes followed and harassed and publications censored when they report on sensitive subjects. The Reporters Without Borders survey condemns clauses of the new press law that retain prison sentences for some press offences. Article 41 provides for between three to five years in jail for "any attack on Islam, the monarchy or territorial integrity." The report also expressed concern about the recent unofficial ban on the pan-Arab TV station Al-Jazeera and the censorship since 2001 of the Islamist weekly Rissalat al-Foutouwa. The report calls for the press law to be amended to remove imprisonment for offences and for a clearer definition of the term "any attack on Islam, the monarchy or territorial integrity," which it says can be interpreted very broadly. It also calls for state subsidies and advertising to be allotted to newspapers in an open manner. The report