What about the Videos that Remind Moroccans of the Years of Lead?

                                                Abdessamad El Hidour

By Jamal Elabiad

I was shocked to read yesterday on Facebook that Abdessamad El Hidour, a February 20 movement activist in Taza, was sentenced to three years in prison after he was accused of trespassing the red-lines through harshly criticizing king Mohamed VI on a YouTube video.

The trial of Abdessamad El Hidour as well as other Moroccan political activists shows beyond doubt that social networking sites such as YouTube and Facebook have become among the means the Moroccan cyber-police uses to bring to court anyone who has the guts to criticize the North-African monarchy. 

We may disagree on the fact that criticizing somebody doesn’t necessarily mean insulting him or her, but what we cannot disagree on is the fact that the Moroccan cyber-police has so far turned a blind eye to a large number of YouTube videos that clearly show the barbarity and brutality Moroccan pro-reform protesters were treated with.  

Think, for example, of the several videos that appeared on YouTube, and that show women from Taza accusing the security forces of having raided their homes at night, beat them and in some cases threatened them of rape. Why the Moroccan cyber-police didn’t call for the arrest of the members of the security forces whose brutality reminds Moroccans of the years of lead? The answers are many. One is that those videos, for the Moroccan cyber-police, are mere fabrications!

If She were in a Democratic State...!

By Jamal Elabiad

The members of the disciplinary board at school decided to fire her. It’s not because she humiliated one of her teachers or got into a fight with one of her classmates. It’s simply because she videotaped her science teacher while he was doing an immoral act in class: wanking in front of his students. The teacher was arrested immediately after the video was posted on YouTube and many newspapers and news websites tackled his unprecedented immoral behaviour within Moroccan schools.

I was shocked to know that the student behind the video was sacked from the high school she was studying in. As far as I’m concerned, the student had done nothing wrong. Her sole purpose behind filming her teacher was exposing the immoral crime he committed in class. It’s beyond doubt that if the student were in a democratic state, she wouldn’t be fired from school as a form of punishment. She would, instead, be rewarded for having the guts to use her cell phone in order to uncover her teacher’s immoral act and, as a result, bring him to court. 

I really do not know why the Moroccan Association of Bloggers resorted to silence and didn’t do anything to support the student in question. Isn’t one of the association’s aims is to stand by all the people who use digital media to expose all forms of corruption and impunity?  The least the association could have done was issuing a statement of solidarity with the student and denouncing the unfair punishment she received from the discipline board at school. Possibly, most members of the association’s board are teachers, and that’s why they preferred to keep mum with regard to the unfair decision of the school disciplinary board!

On Moroccan Bouazizis

 By Jamal Elabiad

The question I find myself asking whenever a Moroccan sets himself on fire in protest over unemployment or injustice is why Moroccans do not take to the streets in solidarity with their Bouazizis and do not return home till they realise all their demands exactly as the Tunisians did when Mohamed Bouazizi set fire to himself to protest against the fact that he was humiliated by a police woman.

Is it because Moroccans are against self-immolation as a form of protest?

Is it because Moroccans are self-centred?

Is it because Moroccans are satisfied with a monarchy that reigns and rules?

Is it because Moroccans haven’t lost patience yet?

Is it because Moroccans are still waiting for their government’s promises to come true?

Is it because Moroccans are afraid of change?

Is it because Moroccans have short memories?

Is it because half of Moroccans are illiterate?

Is it because 2M and RTM are the only TV channels Moroccans trusted for news updates?

Is it because Moroccans are the exception to the rule that all Arab countries suffer from high levels of unemployment, poverty, and corruption?

Is it because all Moroccans are equal and no Moroccans are more equal than others?

Is it because the Moroccans who have set themselves alight are mentally ill or something like this?

Don’t ask me for the answer. As you surely know, questions are sometimes better than answers.  

Everything is Nice in Morocco!

 By Jamal Elabiad

They could have tried other means of protest rather than setting themselves on fire. That’s how many Moroccans commented on the news that some unemployed graduates set themselves alight last week in Rabat in protest over unemployment. I’m sorry to say that one of them died last Tuesday in a Casablanca hospital.

Moroccans are victims of their national TV channels that usually keep them in the dark when it comes to the serious social ills Moroccans suffer from, including unemployment. For instance, they have never informed Moroccans of the fact that those unemployed graduates did not turn to self-immolation till all the other means of protest failed to put pressure on the Moroccan government to find jobs for them. Think of the rallies, sit-ins, and hunger strikes Moroccan unemployed graduates have organised on a daily basis around Morocco, and that 2M and RTM have never covered.

Many foreign TV channels have covered the Moroccan unemployed graduates who burned themselves last week in Rabat, and some of them even re-published the videos that were posted on YouTube showing their colleagues trying to rescue them. Moroccan TV channels, however, didn’t cover the incident for many reasons. One is that it doesn’t serve their slogan behind selecting news for Moroccans: everything is nice in Morocco!

On a MAP News Story

By Jamal Elabiad 

A news story without reliable sources that support it aims at lying to the readers or the viewers through providing them with false news stories.  I really do not remember the book or the article where I read this brief definition of a false news story and the purpose it serves. It came to my mind soon after I read an article on the Web site of the Moroccan News Agency (or MAP) about the violent clashes that recently took place in Taza between demonstrators and the security forces.

According to the Moroccan News Agency, most of those who took to the streets in Taza on January 4^th were adolescents. But the Agency did not mention the sources its description of Taza protesters relied on. That simply means it described the protesters as minors with the intention to mislead Moroccans.

This is not the first time the Moroccan News Agency has turned to misleading and truth-hiding. Take, for example, the pro-democracy protests the Feb. 20 movement has been organizing for almost a year. The number of protesters around Morocco the Agency has reported always contradicts that of the movement activists.

In brief, the Agency always reduces on purpose the number of the Moroccans who take to the streets every Sunday to call for bread with the taste of dignity. Among the purposes the Agency serves through not giving the real number of pro-reform protesters in Morocco is whitening the image of the Moroccan government, its funder, at home and abroad.

It’s really a pity that the Moroccan News Agency still believes that Moroccans heavily depend on it for news updates and the latest developments in their country, and that’s why it usually misinforms them and provide them only with the news the Moroccan government wants them to know. He who pays the piper calls the tune!

YouTube is among the video-sharing Web sites the Agency could have visited before jumping to that conclusion. By the way, YouTube is one of the Web sites Moroccans trust for latest events in their country. Many videos on it show beyond doubt that the majority of those who protested last Wednesday in Taza were not minors.

They were unemployed graduates, inhabitants of El Koucha, a neglected neighbourhood in Taza, and university students. They took to the streets and were harshly suppressed by the security forces after they lost patience with the false promises they received from the officials in charge of the city affairs whenever they complained about joblessness, poverty, nepotism, and corruption.  

Moroccans’ expectations of the new government are countless. Reforming the public media is one example in point. And the Moroccan News Agency is a good start for several reasons. One is that the Agency is a “trusted” source of news for both Moroccan TV channels and radios!

Why I Will Not Vote on Nov. 25?

By Jamal Elabiad

Like many Moroccans, I will boycott the upcoming Moroccan legislative elections which were scheduled for November 25.  Many reasons lie behind my decision, the most important of which are the focal point of this article.

Nothing has been changed as far as the measures Moroccan political parties rely on in order to choose the candidates that will represent them around Morocco. At the city where I have been working for seven years, the candidate a Moroccan socialist party selected is a rich businessman who is notorious in the city for graft and electoral fraud. 

He managed to win the previous elections due to the bribes and false promises he gave to the electorate, but not to the fact that he was, for them, the right candidate to speak on their behalf in the parliament. The electorate are not to blame simply because most of them are poor and illiterate.

I am quite sure that the party leaders fielded him though they know everything about his past electoral fraud. One reason behind that is that he has all the means that will help him win easily the upcoming elections, including money.  Money, by the way, is a key factor for a candidate to win the elections in Morocco. I am also quite sure that the city where I am working is not an exception when it comes to the fact that one needs to be well-off in order to be selected by Moroccan political parties as a candidate in the legislative elections. 

Not only did the socialist party leaders know everything about the candidate’s past electoral fraud, but the ministry of interior as well.  However, both of them did not reject his application despite the fact that his CV is dirty with electoral fraud. The reason why the ministry of interior did not too prevent that businessman from running in the upcoming general elections was the fact that he is the type of candidates that are ready to do what the ministry of interior wants them to do, not what those who voted for them want them to.

My point is that the ministry of interior in Morocco is known for its role in rigging the elections results.  I know that the ministry of interior did prevent many people from running for the elections, but this is just to have Moroccans believe that the ministry is against electoral fraud. In brief, I decided to boycott the upcoming Nov. 25 parliamentary elections due in part to the fact that the ministry of interior has been accused since independence of rigging the elections.

While I was writing this article, a Facebook friend told me that the ministry of interior banned many people from running in the coming legislative elections, including the candidate in question.  The ministry of interior, for me, did only half of the job when it did not bring their political parties to court and accuse them of encouraging electoral fraud through selecting on purpose only people who were guilty of vote-buying.

The minister of interior is another reason why I will boycott the legislative elections. He is among the ministers in Morocco that are not elected, but appointed by the king.  I will not vote simply because the revised constitution was not clear on whether there will be some ministers in the new government that will be appointed by the king. That means one of the basic demands of Moroccan pro-democracy protesters still has been fulfilled:  a king that reigns, but doesn’t rule.  Think of the fact that the prime minister still cannot dissolve the Cabinet without the king’s consent, and the fact that the king can delegate the chairmanship of the council of ministers to the prime minister but the latter can only operate within the confines of agendas set by the king!