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 that.

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 like satellite images or locations of his palaces as in Google earth and Google maps or parodic videos as in Youtube. The Blocking of Google earth and Google maps may also be dictated by the government's desire to block information leading to secret locations like secret prisons.

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 calling himself the "Targuist Sniper" from Targuist, a small Berber town in the north of 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 dicussions on the internet, but they were never mentioned in the state media. Many were seeing them as a new way of cyberactivism of fighting the widespread corruption in the government institutions.

Moroccan police (Gendarmerie royale) conducted what the media described as a brutal search for the people behind Berber Targuist Sniper videos. Four young Moroccans will appear in court as witnesses in the trials of the corrupt police officers. But they might well face charges of humiliation of the police institution because of the bad publicity it got from these shocking videos.

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.

Websites reported as blocked in Morocco

* Google Earth
* Google maps is regularily blocked
* LiveJournal
* https://www.stanaphone.com
* http://www.anonymizer.com
* http://www.multiproxy.org

ee also

* Media of Morocco

External links

* [http://opennet.net/research/regions/mena A study conducted by OpenNet initiative about Internet censorship in the mena region (Midle Eeast and North Africa)]
* [http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/10/29/morocco-stop-internet-censorship/ Interview of a Moroccan Internet activist]
* [http://youtube.com/watch?v=IBlRxs4JqGY A Taguist Snipper Video in Youtube]
* [http://www.censureinternetaumaroc.com/ An online petition against Internet censophip in Morocco]