False Freedom - The State of Freedom inside Morocco
People don’t routinely disappear anymore in Morocco. Nor has anybody been executed since the 90s, despite capital punishment still being in place. Laws were put in place in the recent years to protect the Moroccan people’s rights.
But while I am sitting with a couple of friends in a cafe, watching a small demonstration, it becomes pretty clear to us that the authorities are still quite jumpy when it comes to opposition. In front of us, around 100 retirees of the army are standing behind a banner, halfheartedly chanting slogans in Arabic. Facing them is a line of police officers and gendarmerie wearing helmets and armed with truncheons. Also keeping an eye on them are roughly 50 more uniformed men, and swarming around the demonstration like bees around honey are a number of officers in civil clothing.
In general, the authorities permitted demonstrations and protests to take place, although keeping a close eye on them in the last few years. They even tolerated several protests directly against specific policies or the government itself, though some, despite being peaceful, were forcefully dispersed by the security forces.
The government continued to have a very low level of tolerance regarding some of the long-standing ‘red lines’, though, which include the public image of the king and the ‘territorial integrity’ of the Kingdom. The latter is used to silence the calls for independence of Western Sahara, which was annexed by Morocco in 1975. Morocco considers the Western Sahara, which is larger than the UK, as its “Southern Provinces”. Demonstrations advocating Western Sahara are cracked down ruthlessly, and if felt necessary by the authorities also with the use of force.
Ever since the annexation and widespread international disapproval towards Morocco for it, Western Sahara has been at the top of the list of sensitive topics for the government in Rabat. Pro-Sahrawi activists are jailed, organizations advocating independence harassed, denied legal status or shut down, demonstrations dispersed. Reporting on the issue from inside Morocco got a number of foreign journalists and TV crews expelled in the last few years, blogs by Moroccans shut down and Moroccan freelance journalists imprisoned.
It is clear that the authorities don’t appreciate us, a group of foreigners, hanging out around the demonstration here in Rabat, either. We drew a lot of weird, disapproving and slightly angry looks to ourselves while walking past the uniformed men earlier.
Right outside the cafe where we are sitting is a civil car with a civil driver. A uniformed police officer approaches, opens the door and sits down next to the driver. Five minutes later, they both get out and walk into the very cafe that we were sitting into. Moments later, the waiter comes to our table and, despite us not having been there for very long and without saying a word, passes us the bill.
Usually, actions taken by foreigners that may question the political system in Morocco a bit too much are shut down through non-violent and rather ‘passive aggressive’ actions, such as not being permitted travel to a certain part of the country, authorities claiming that the reporters are ‘lacking certification’ or do not have the proper papers to be doing their job or reporting on a certain issue. Sometimes they resort to harsher measures, such as confiscating video or photo material (which is usually returned, though), or expelling the news crew from the country.
The press in Morocco is not free. Reporters without Borders see a ‘slow but steady’ decline of freedom of the press inside the Kingdom, and Freedom House ranks Morocco as “not free” when it comes to the press. The government maintains close control of all public broadcast media in the country, and the King and his advisors directly appoint the leaders of radio and TV stations inside the country, and independent publishing companies have a high degree of self-censorship.
With activists from inside the nation, however, especially those advocating the independence of Western Sahara from Morocco, the police forces may not be this patient or cautious. There have been repeated reports of excess use of force on demonstrators and police arbitrarity. There have been cases in the past few years when police brutally arrested entire groups of peaceful protestors.
There are also individuals who reported torture while in police custody, despite a significant decrease since the new king came to power and with a couple new regulations that are supposed to safeguard the people’s rights. But even when torture is reported by those that experienced it, the authorities often fail to investigate the claims in detail - or sometimes even at all. Torture in police custody, although now not a regular practice anymore, is still largely tolerated by the authorities - which is ironic, considering that “custody” literally means that the person is being put ‘under protection’ of the police forces.
Not only individual activists face harassment by the authorities, but it can also be quite challenging for NGOs to work from inside the country. The AMDH, a Moroccan human rights organization, has faced notorious challenges obtaining legal status for their offices, and only about half of their offices have been approved by the authorities, despite the applications first being handed in over 10 years ago. Even major international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Freedom House faced quite substantial challenges working inside Morocco.
Overall, despite there were obvious improvements regarding human rights since the new king took over power, the authorities have no interest in further expanding the political freedoms of their people, nor the freedom of the press, in the country. Rather, the situation has started to gradually deteriorate again, with the people slipping into a country where they have less of a say over what is happening to them and the authorities have more power to crack down on anything and anybody they disapprove of.
Information in this article relies on Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders and background knowledge + personal experience of the author.
