Censorship in Morocco: Tale of Two Cartoons
Banned: The cartoon in Le Monde by Plantu that got the French newspaper banned in Morocco for two days last week. Ironically, the cartoon makes fun of the trial of a Moroccan cartoonist Khalid Gueddar "who dared to draw the royal Moroccan family."
Morocco's Mohammed VI (M6 in cool company) likes to think he runs an enlightened kingdom. He likes to project an image of a Morocco more free, less authoritarian, than its Arab neighbors. Like most authoritarian monarchs with mirrors for advisers, Mohammed VI deludes himself, of course. He's an absentee monarch, fond of expensive and mysterious vacations far from home, where poverty thrives but the economy and democracy don't. When he is at home he is either invisible, or the ceremonial pomp of his self-importance--a specialty of this royal line that has invented itself a lineage going back to the Prophet Mohammed--drowns the country in one flood of presumption or another.
Press freedom is especially dismal in Morocco these days. Take the offices of Akbar el Youm, a daily newspaper that launched earlier this year and quickly became the third-biggest Arabic-language daily in the country.
On Sept. 28, 2009, the government ordered Akbar el Youm silenced, shuttered its offices in Casablanca, and posted policemen at its entrance to prevent any of the newspaper's 70 employees from reaching their desks.
The reason? The following cartoon by Khalid Gueddar, published on Sept. 26:
It's "Moulay Ismail on his nuptial truss," says the line in Arabic. Moulay Ismail is a cousin of Mohammed VI. He got married to a German woman recently. The faintly Hitlerean pose of the cartoon is gratuitous and vulgar. The Moroccan ministry of the interior didn't like the cartoon. It called it anti-Semitic for the way it portrayed the Moroccan star apparently as a Star of David. "We wanted to express our affection to the prince for his marriage in his cartoon. I do not know from where they get these Star of David and anti-Semitism things," Gueddar said.
The ministry then displayed its own anti-Semitism when it charged that the depiction of the national star as a Star of David was "an outrage to the flag." The cartoon, the ministry charged, also "lacked respect for the royal family"--which, in Morocco, must be respected more than humor, truth or justice, as the cartoon case proved: Khaled Gueddar and his editor, Toufik Bouachrine, now face three to five years in prison. Moulay Ismail, the nuptialized prince, is claiming $400,000 in damages.
It was far from the first Gueddar drawing targeting the king or his family. Guedddar writes a running cartoon called "The King Who No Longer Wanted to Be King," a rather accurate description and excoriation of Mohammed VI's absenteeism. Imagine Gary Trudeau unleashed on Mohammed VI. (Watch a video, in French but showing many of Gueddar's drawings, featuring Gueddar talking about his case.)
The absurdity doesn't stop there. In its Thursday editions, Le Monde, the French daily, published on its front page the biting cartoon by Plantu scoring Morocco for its repression. Morocco banned distribution of Le Monde that day and the next. Why the next? For two reasons: Khaled Gueddar's case went to court on Occt. 23 (his editor's case went to court five days earlier). And Le Monde carried an article about the case and Morocco's heavy-handed contempt for a free press in its Oct. 23 editions.
Reuters reports that the "editor and two journalists from Arabic language weekly Al Michaal will be sentenced this week for what the government called false information after they published articles about King Mohammed's health last month." That trial was conducted without defense lawyers. "The editor and a reporter at daily Al Jarida al Oula are also being tried for a report on the king's health."
The metaphor is irresistible. It's not the king's health they're reporting on. It's Morocco's.
See Also:
- Morocco's Democracy Mirage
- Profile: Mohammed VI
- Profile: Morocco
- BlogPulse: Morocco's Sclerosis
- Morocco Targets Shiites and Homosexuals
Comments
The problem isn’t Morocco, it’s kings. The same “offense” would result in similar trouble in Thailand. That said, Morocco is in many ways, a pleasant country, and her citizens feel little to no hesitation to discuss the shortcomings of M6, who is routinely compared to his father, (right, M5) and who fails by comparison. “Freedom of the press” is not by any means a universal notion– It doesn’t exist in England, which many Americans think of as a similar democracy. A free press is missing in Africa, in most of the middle east, certainly from most of Asia. It would be nice if Morocco enjoyed a freer press, but it is hardly an authoritarian dictatorship (see North Korea for example) filled with miserable downtrodden people. Cops are few, soldiers conspicuous for their absence and people, not all of course, but many, are happy and lead lives of their own choosing. And conditions in Morocco have improved immensely in the last 20 years. Is the king a twit? For certain. But he is a survivable twit.
What you forgot to mention is that the cartoon was banned after the Jewish Community Council in Morocco condemned the publication of the cartoon, calling it antisemitic and saying that it encouraged racism, which should be the reason why you don’t see the news in the mainstream.
“Should”? I’m not sure what you mean. And how has that initial ban have anything to do with the ban of Le Monde, which demolishes the Moroccan government’s argument that it was addressing anti-Semitism?