Internet censorship in Morocco
As of March 2006, Morocco had blocked access to many blogging sites, such as LiveJournal. Reporters Without Borders says that Morocco now censors all political websites advocating Western Sahara's separatism ideas. Google Earth has also been added to the list of censored websites in Morocco. In 2007 Morocco's main telecommunication operator Maroc Telecom (a subsidiary of Vivendi) also censored YouTube for some days, without giving any reason for it.
Morocco also blocked some sites allowing censorship circumvention.
Main causes of censorship
As there has been no judiciary decisions leading to sites blocking, one can only speculate about the real reason; some patterns emerge though, it seems that the blocked sites are often related to the Polisario movement claiming independence of Western Sahara, Islamist extremists and fundamentalists, as well as sites carrying non official or subversive information about the king Mohammed VI such as parodic videos as in Youtube.
The Youtube Ban
When Videos judged offensive to the king were posted on Youtube, Maroc Telecom decided to ban the site, without basing its act on a judiciary decision. This has led to an immense uproar among the Moroccan blogosphere (also called Blogoma) and Moroccan internauts as well as the printed press, as the site was immensely popular. Some days later Maroc Telecom lifted the ban. The public reaction was one the founding events of the consciousness and the fight against internet censorship in Morocco.
The Targuist Sniper case
An anonymous person calling himself the "Targuist Sniper" from Targuist, a small Berber town in northern Morocco, posted on Youtube several videos of good quality showing Moroccan police officers, one after another, accepting cash bribes from truck drivers and potential smugglers. The videos generated wide debate on the press and discussions on the Internet, but they were never mentioned in the state media. Many were seeing them as a new way of cyberactivism by fighting the widespread corruption in the government institutions.
The videos led to the arrest of nine corrupt policemen and the transfer of others.[1]
The Fouad Mourtada case
Fouad Mourtada is a 26-year old Moroccan engineer who was sentenced by a Casablanca court to three years in prison for creating a fake profile of the king’s brother on Facebook. He was convicted on February 23, 2008 of “villainous practices linked to the alleged theft" of the Crown Prince Moulay Rachid's identity. Fouad was sentenced to 3 years of jail plus a fine of 10,000 Moroccan Dirhams.[2][3] But on the evening of March 18, 2008, Fouad was released by a royal pardon after spending 43 days in jail.[4]
Law
There is no particular law governing or defining Internet censorship criteria, sites are often blocked and unblocked without giving any justification as was the case with YouTube.
See also
References
- ^ http://www.menassat.com/?q=en/news-articles/2107-moroccos-video-sniper-sparks-new-trend
- ^ "Jail for Facebook spoof Moroccan". BBC News. February 23, 2008. Retrieved May 5, 2010.
- ^ "The Fake Prince of Facebook". The Nation.
- ^ "Morocco 'Facebook prince' pardon". BBC News. March 19, 2008. Retrieved Jan 4, 2011.