Abderrahim El Ouali
30 November 2007
Casablanca — Lack of media interest in reporting on death penalty issues is responsible for widespread public indifference to whether or not Morocco eventually abolishes capital punishment, according to analysts and activists here.
"The Moroccan media has not yet made abolition part of its agenda," Driss Ould Kabla, editor-in-chief of the Al-Michal weekly, told IPS.
Despite its 15-year-long unofficial moratorium, when the time came to vote on the recent U.N. General Assembly resolution calling for a worldwide moratorium on executions and eventual end to the death penalty, Morocco sided with the rest of the Arab world and joined the pro-capital punishment camp.
Morocco was one of the 52 countries -- many of them Arab -- which voted against the moratorium resolution on Nov. 15. Moroccan diplomats did not even take to the floor during the two days of debate in the General Assembly's human rights committee -- unlike Egyptian and Syrian diplomats who expressed strong criticism.
The Moroccan media largely ignored the country's stand on the U.N. General Assembly resolution.
Al-Michal is the only Moroccan newspaper that regularly reports on death penalty-related issues.
The near-total media blackout on death penalty issues is largely due to the failure of the press to jettison its antiquated conformist mentality -- not because of official censorship, Kabla said.
"We have a long history of support for the death penalty from all quarters, political, social and religious," Kabla explained.
Expressing dismay at the absence of media interest in this event, Kabla said that the press did find its voice when there were even more controversial issues to report. "The Moroccan independent press has been showing enough daring on other issues," he stressed.
This sensitive reporting involved recent coverage of the alleged extra-judicial killings during the rule of King Hassan II who died in 1999. Some human rights activists have alleged the killings could number in the hundreds.
Kabla's own investigations into some of these killings -- particularly those alleged to have been carried out at a secret service villa in Rabat, the Moroccan capital -- were published in his own weekly and re-published on many websites in Arabic.
Kabla said that NGOs shared some of the blame for public apathy towards death penalty abolition: "Abolitionist NGOs are not communicating widely enough".
Ahmed Kouza, an Amnesty International activist, agreed that the Moroccan press was tame in its reporting on the death penalty. Press fail to appreciate the relationship between abolishing capital punishment and furthering democratic values, he suggested.
But otherwise the Moroccan media was playing a "crucial role in the democratic changes taking place in the country", Kouza told IPS. "Abolition is an integral part of this on-going 'democratic transition' in the country", he argued.
The 'Democratic Transition' was launched in Morocco in 1998 when King Hassan II named opposition leader Abderrahmane Youssoufi as prime minister.
Hassan II ruled from 1961 to 1999. His son, King Mohamed VI, who acceded to throne in July 1999, continued the democratic reforms. He also launched a reconciliation process with victims of human rights violations under his father by setting up the Equity and Reconciliation Board (IER).
The IER -- in its final report submitted to King Mohamed VI in 2005 -- recommended the abolition of the death penalty as part of this reconciliation process.
In 2006, Bouchra Khiari of the Democratic Forces Front, seized the initiative by introducing a bill in parliament to abolish capital punishment. "There was a thoroughgoing debate at this time between the abolitionists and advocates of the death penalty," Kabla said. But even this lively debate was not widely reported in the media "because the abolitionist movement is not yet influential enough," he explained.
Kouza believes that it is only a matter of time before the Moroccan press will take up reporting the death penalty issue. "The political and social engagement is still missing," Kouza said. "But journalism is certainly becoming more professional."
Independent media outlets are flourishing. Since the 'Democratic Transition', the media landscape has seen the addition of some 400 private newspapers. The state broadcasting monopoly has been broken up. There are now 11 independent radio stations -- although television is still state-controlled.
Morocco's last execution was in 1993, but death sentences continue to be handed down for murder. Human rights activists believe there are more than 150 currently on death row in the country.
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